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EZEKIEL  •  CHEEVER 

HVIVS  •  SCHOLAE  •  PRAECEPTOR 

PER  •  ANNOS  •  PROPE  •  OCTO  •  ET  •  TRIGINTA 

LONDINII-NATVS-A.D.  MDCXIV- VIII-KAL.  FEB. 

IBi  •  EDVCATVS •  IN  •  SCHOLA  •  CHRISTS  •  HOSPITAL-  DICTA 

IN  •  NVMERVM  •  QVIVM  •  ACADEMICORVM  •  COLLEGII 

EMMANVEL-IN-VNIVERSITATE-CANTABRICIENSI 

ASCITVS-A.D.  MDCXXXII'PRIDIE-ID.  IAN. 

HANG-PETHT-TERRAM-A.D.  MDCXXXVII 

FRAEPOSITVS-HVIC- SCHOLAE -A.D.  MDCLXX -VIII-ID.  IAN. 

OBIIT-A.D.  MDCCVni-XII-KAL.  SEPT. 

VIXIT  •  PIE  •  ANNIS  •  LXXXXIV 


COTTON  •  MATHER  •  DISCIPVLVS  •  GRATVS  •  HVIC 
OMNEM  •  NOVAE  •  ANCLIAE-  ERVDITIONEM  •  ASCRIPSIT 


m  \ 


TABLET   IN  THE    BOSTON   LATIN   SCHOOL 


iB^chicl  Cbeever 
Scboolm  aster 


INTRODUCTION       BY 
EDWARD   EVERETT  HALE,  D.D. 


The  PALMER 
COMPANY 

50  Bromfield 
St.,  Boston 


Big  Elisabeth  porter  (Boulb 

Author  <>/■  "John  Adams  and  Daniel  Webster  as  Schoolmasters;" 
"The  Brownings  and  America;"  "Anne  Gilchrist  and  Walt  Whit- 
man; "  "  A  Pioneer  Doctor;  "  "  One's  Self  I  Sing  and  Other  Poems." 


Copyright  1904. 

BY 

Thk  Palmer  Company 


First  Edition 


ITnttobuction 

WAS  greatly  pleased  when  I  learned  that 
Miss  Gould  had  consented  to  write  the 
life  of  Ezekiel  Cheever,  for  I  knew  how 
careful  had  been  her  study  of  the  career 
of  this  interesting  man.  She  knew  more 
of  him  than  anyone  did  ;  and  now  that  I  have  read  this 
valuable  book,  I  need  hardly  say  that  I  am  delighted 
with  her  success. 

I  thought  I  knew  something  of  Cheever  myself.  In 
one  of  the  Prize  Books,  Mr.  Benjamin  A.  Gould,  the 
head  master  of  the  Latin  School  after  1816,  had  given 
a  little  sketch  of  Cheever' s  career;  and  as  schoolboys 
in  that  old  school  we  knew  of  his  Accidence,  and  that 
he  was  one  of  the  heroes  of  the  school.  I  graduated  at 
that  school  in  1835.  The  exhibition  exercises  of  our 
class  marked  the  second  centennial  anniversary  of  the 
school.  In  1840  the  Latin  School  Association  was 
formed,  of  which  I  have  now  the  honor  to  be  Presi- 
dent. I  was  the  first  Secretary  of  that  Society  and  I 
edited  its  first  catalogue.  It  thus  became  my  pleasant 
duty  to  find  what  I  then  could  of  Cheever' s  life,  and  I 
like  to  acknowledge  here  the  help  which  I  received 
from  that  distinguished  historian,  Mr.  Samuel  Francis 
Haven,  the  accomplished  Librarian  of  the  American 
Antiquarian  Society. 

I  say  all  this  because  it  is  with  peculiar  satisfaction, 
I  may  even  say  surprise,  that  in  reading  Miss  Gould's 
book  I  see  that  she  has  found  clues  which  we  had  not 


1rntro^uction 


suspected,  and  has  so  followed  them  back  that  she  pre- 
sents Cheever  to  us  in  our  generation  as  a  character 
much  more  real  than  he  was  even  to  the  Latin  School 
boys  of  fifty  years  ago.  The  history  of  New  England 
is  much  better  known  than  it  was  sixty  years  ago ;  and 
whoever  traces  the  annals,  which  are  so  interesting,  of 
the  steps  which  made  out  of  a  trading  corporation  an 
independent  state  in  one  hundred  and  fifty  years,  has  to 
consider  among  the  initial  agencies  of  that  advance  the 
education  freely  given  by  the  State.  Miss  Gould  has 
done  me  the  honor  to  print  at  length  in  her  Appendix 
a  paper  of  mine  prepared  for  Education.  I  have  said 
in  that  paper  that  I  do  not  believe  that  any  other  trading 
village  in  the  world  in  the  eighteenth  century  gave  to 
one  third  of  its  boys  and  young  men  such  instruction 
in  the  Latin  language  as  Boston  did.  Whether  trade 
carried  them  to  Cadiz,  to  Lisbon,  to  Havana,  to  Brest, 
or  anywhere  else  in  the  world,  they  could  speak  in 
the  Latin  language  to  the  foreigner.  No  man  can  fol- 
low the  history  of  the  American  Revolution  without 
accounting  for  the  make-up  of  such  men  as  Sam  Adams, 
James  Bowdoin,  Henry  Knox,  Joseph  Warren,  John 
Hancock.  Four  of  these  were  pupils  of  the  Boston 
Latin  School,  and  Warren  would  not  have  been  Warren 
but  for  its  avail  as  a  metropolitan  school. 

When  one  says  this,  he  ought  to  know  what  made 
a  school  like  that.  Mr.  Emerson  left  to  us  no  wiser 
phrase  than  when  he  said,  "  It  does  not  matter  so  much 
what  you  study  as  with  whom  you  study."  Who  gave 
the  Boston  Latin  School  its  repute  ?     Who  set  the  stand- 


1^ntro^uctlon 


ard  for  the  little  village,  which,  at  the  common  charge, 
gave  every  boy  the  best  training  of  which  that  time  had 
any  idea  ? 

Simply  it  was  Ezekiel  Chkever,  in  the  years  be- 
tween 1639  and  1708. 

A  first-rate  life  of  such  a  man  makes  a  very  important 
addition  to  the  history  of  New  England. 


Edward  E.  Hale. 


Eseliiel  Chccvct 
Scboolmaster 


Esekiel  Cbeevec 

>HEN  Agassiz  requested  to  go  down  the 
ages  with  no  other  name  than  "  Teacher," 
he  not  only  appropriately  crowned  his 
own  life  work,  but  stamped  the  vocation 
of  teaching  with  lasting  honor.  In  this  vocation,  Eze- 
kiel  Cheever  stands  out  especially  clear.  Born  in 
London  January  25,  16 14,  in  1637,  at  the  age  of  twenty- 
three,  he  came  to  Boston,  seven  years  after  its  settle- 
ment. He  did  not  remain  there  long,  however,  for  the 
following  year  he  is  in  the  Indian  region  of  Quinnipiack 
helping  John  Davenport,  Theophilus  Eaton  and  others 
found  what  was  afterwards  called  the  New  Haven  Col- 
ony. He  was  one  of  the  famous  little  band  who  in  1639 
in  Mr.  Newman's  barn  signed  the  compact  for  the 
religious  and  civil  government  of  the  colony ;  a  "  Fourth 
Colony  of  New  English  Christians,"  which,  as 
Cotton  Mather  says  in  his  Magnalia^  was  "  under  the 
Conduct  of  as  Holy  and  as  Prudent  and  as  Genteel 
Persons  as  most  that  ever  visited  these  Nooks  of 
America."  Referring  to  Mr.  Eaton,  who  was  chosen 
the  first  governor,  he  declares  it  was  "the  Admiration 
of  all  Spectators  to  behold  the  Discretion,  the  Gravity, 
the  Equity,"  with  which  for  about  a  score  of  years 
until  his  death  he,  as  the  "  Glory  and  Pillar"  of  the 
colony,    managed    its    public    affairs.      Doubtless    the 


lo  fisefttel  Cbeever 

young  Cheever  heard  him  say  what  Mather  says  was  a 
favorite  aphorism  of  his,  "  Some  count  it  a  great 
matter  to  Die  well,  but  I  am  sure  'tis  a  great  matter  to 
Live  well." 

While  Governor  Eaton  as  the  ' '  Moses  of  the 
Christian  Colony"  was  particularly  engaged  in  civil 
affairs,  John  Davenport,  as  "the  Aaron,"  was  leading 
in  church  affairs,  —  his  ministry,  his  discipline,  his 
government  and  his  universal  direction  continuing,  as 
Mather  says,  for  many  years,  even  till  after  the  resto- 
ration of  Charles  II.,  when  the  Connecticut  and  New 
Haven  Colonies  became  one.  He  was  a  close  student, 
so  much  so  that  the  Indian  savages  called  him,  ♦'  So 
big  study  man."  A  graduate  of  Oxford  University,  he 
naturally  desired  to  have  a  classical  school  for  the 
youth  of  the  new  colony.  Governor  Eaton,  who  was  a 
companion  of  his  in  their  English  life,  sympathized 
with  his  idea.  Who  could  better  manage  such  than 
the  young  Ezekiel  Cheever,  who  had  been  educated  at 
an  English  university.  He  had  married  and  settled 
down  among  them  in  a  home  of  his  own.  Having  been 
a  student  at  Emmanuel  College,  "  that  Seminary  of  Pu- 
ritans in  Cambridge,"  as  Cotton  Mather  called  it,  pos- 
sibly he  was  better  fitted  for  the  work  than  if  educated 
at  other  colleges.  But  whether  so  or  not,  in  the  same 
summer  as  the  signing  of  the  compact  (1639)  a  school 
for  boys,  for  "  boys  only  as  were  to  be  taught  to  make 
Latin,"  was  opened  in  New  Haven  in  his  own  home, 
said  to  have  been  at  the  corner  of  Grove  and  Church 
Streets.      Little     Michael     Wigglesworth,     afterwards 


Scboolmaater  n 

famous  as  the  author  of  the  Day  of  Doom,  was  one  of 
the  pupils,  his  father  being  one  of  the  townspeople.  In 
his  Autobiography  he  tells  of  being  sent  to  school  to 
Mr.  Ezekiel  Cheever,  who  "  taught  school  in  his  own 
house,"  and  of  profiting  so  much  in  a  year  or  two, 
''through  ye  blessing  of  God,"  that  he  began  "to 
make  Latin  and  to  get  forward  apace."  The  records 
of  the  colony  tell  that  this  school  was  for  the  ' '  better 
training  up  of  youth  in  the  town,  that  through  God's 
blessing  they  may  be  fitted  for  public  service  hereafter 
either  in  church  or  commonwealth." 

For  several  years  Mr.  Cheever  received  for  his  teach- 
ing twenty  pounds  a  year,  when,  that  "  not  proving  a 
competent  maintenance,"  it  was  increased  to  thirty 
pounds.  A  schoolhouse  came  later  into  being,  said  to 
have  been  built  on  the  Green  near  Elm  Street,  a  little 
west  of  Temple.  (Blake.)  Votes  of  both  town  and 
colony  are  on  record  for  the  grade  of  the  school  to  be 
raised,  and  for  Mr.  Cheever' s  salary  to  be  increased 
from  the  public  treasury. 

The  young  teacher  was  not  blessed  with  riches. 
In  1643  his  name  is  sixth  in  the  list  of  planters  and 
their  estates,  his  estate  being  valued  only  at  twenty 
pounds.  Dr.  Leonard Woolsey  Bacon,  in  his  "Histori- 
cal Discourse  of  New  Haven  in  i860,"  declared  that  he 
was  the  "  most  picturesque  character  "  in  the  history  of 
the  New  Haven  Colony.  Though  he  came  from  an 
accomplished  education  in  London,  a  contemporary  of 
Milton  and  other  classically  educated  young  men,  he 
did  not,  he  said,  '•  hesitate  to  apply  himself  to  the  small 


12  fijcfttel  Cbeever 

things  of  colony  life."  He  noted  the  repeated  indica- 
tions of  the  esteem  in  which  he  was  held,  "  not  only  for 
his  work's  sake,  but  for  his  own.  His  pupils  did  not 
caricature  him  on  the  blank  pages  of  his  Accidence^ 
and  call  him  '  Old  Cheever '  below  their  breath,  as 
long  as  they  went  to  school  to  him." 

While  he  was  teaching  the  New  Haven  school,  Mr. 
Cheever  was  an  efficient  helper  in  other  directions,  be- 
ing one  of  the  twelve  men  chosen  as  ' '  fitt  for  the  f oun- 
dacon  worke  of  the  church."  He  was  a  member  of  the 
court  for  the  plantation  at  its  first  session,  and  in  1646 
was  one  of  the  deputies  to  the  General  Court.  This 
was  an  important  position,  since,  there  being  no  written 
code  of  laws  until  later,  the  court  then  determined  all 
differences.  As  an  educator,  the  young  master  was 
doubtless  interested  in  the  order  of  the  General  Court  of 
the  Massachusetts  Colony  in  1647  that  there  should  be  a 
school  for  every  township  of  fifty  householders,  and  a 
grammar  school  for  every  hundred.  He  must  have 
been  conversant  with  the  career  of  Roger  Williams. 
Massasoit,  then  in  his  old  age,  may  even  have  told  him  of 
the  visit  of  the  banished  minister  to  his  Rhode  Island 
home.  Would  we  could  know  what  he  thought  of 
Harry  Vane,  of  Anne  Hutchinson  and  her  independent 
action !     But  all  is  silence. 

Although  never  ordained  to  the  ministry,  Mr.  Cheever 
occasionally  preached.  His  Christian  spirit  is  seen 
when,  being  brought  up  before  the  church  for  dissenting 
from  its  judgment  concerning  some  cases  of  discipline, 
he  said,  "I  had  rather  suffer  anything  from  men  than 


Scboolmaetet  13 

make  a  shipwreck  of  a  good  conscience,  or  go  against 
my  present  light,  though  erroneous  when  discovered." 
But  while  not  wholly  freeing  himself  from  blame  as  to 
his  "  want  of  wisdom  and  coolness  in  ordering  and  utter- 
ing his  speeches,"  yet  he  could  not  be  convinced  that 
he  deserved  the  censure  which  the  church  had  inflicted 
upon  him  ;  and  he  could  not  look  upon  it  as  "  dispensed 
according  to  the  rules  of  Christ."  But  he  concluded 
by  saying  that  he  could  "  wait  upon  God  for  the  discov- 
ery of  Truth  in  his  own  time,  either  to  myself  or  church ; 
that  what  is  amiss  may  be  repented  of  and  reformed ; 
that  His  blessing  and  presence  may  be  among  them,  and 
upon  His  holy  ordinances  rightly  dispensed,  to  His  glory 
and  their  present  and  everlasting  comfort,  which  I 
heartily  pray  for." 

At  this  time  (1649)  he  was  afflicted  by  the  death  of 
Mary,  his  wife.  Six  children — Samuel,  Mary,  Ezekiel, 
Elizabeth,  Sarah  and  Hannah — had  been  bom  to  them, 
Ezekiel  dying  in  infancy. 

A  cherished  hope  of  the  founders  of  the  New 
Haven  Colony  was  to  found  a  college  "for  the  good 
of  posterity."  For  this,  even  land  was  set  apart 
in  the  formation  of  the  town;  but  circumstances 
did  not  favor  the  desire.  Disappointment,  however, 
only  turned  the  attention  of  the  people  to  Harvard  Col- 
lege, then  struggling  into  life  under  President  Dunster; 
and  there  a  good  number  of  the  New  Haven  Colony 
boys  were  sent  to  be  educated.  It  speaks  well  for  the 
educational  influences  at  work  in  that  vicinity  that  of 
the  Harvard  graduates,  from  its  beginning  to  1700,  as 


14  leseRiel  Cbeevet 

many  as  one  in  thirty  came  from  New  Haven.* 
It  is  supposed  that  during  his  residence  in  Ne\v 
Haven  Ezekiel  Cheever  wrote  his  Accidence^  a  short 
introduction  to  the  Latin  tongue  for  the  use  of  schools. 
This  little  book  of  less  than  one  hundred  pages  was 
called  the  "wonder  of  the  age,"  and  is  said  to  have 
been  used  as  generally  as  any  elementary  work  ever 
known;  indeed,  it  is  thought  to  have  done  more  "to 
inspire  young  minds  with  the  love  of  the  study  of  the 
Latin  language  than  any  other  work  of  the  kind  since 
the  first  settlement  of  the  country."  It  passed  through 
eighteen  editions  before  the  Revolution,  the  last  being 
published  in  Boston  in  1838.! 

In  a  prospectus,  containing  commendations  of  the 
work  from  many  eminent  men  of  learning,  the  Hon. 
Josiah  Quincy,  LL.D.,  President  of  Harvard  Col- 
lege, said  of  it :  *'  A  work  which  was  used  for  more 
than  a  century  in  the  schools  of  New  England  as  the 
first  elementary  book  for  learners  of  the  Latin  language ; 
which  held  its  place  in  some  of  the  most  eminent  of 
those  schools,  nearly,  if  not  quite,  to  the  end  of  the  last 
century ;  which  passed  through  at  least  twenty  editions 
in  this  country ;  which  was  the  subject  of  the  successive 
labor  and  improvement  of  a  man  who  spent  seventy 
years  in  the  business  of  instruction,  and  whose  fame  is 
second  to  that  of  no  schoolmaster  New  England  has  ever 


*  For  some  interesting  details  of  this  early  colonial  life,  see 
Stories  of  Old  Netu  Haven,  by  Ernest  H.  Baldwin. 

t  Harvard  College  has  several  editions,  the  earliest  being  the 
tenth,  printed  by  Edes  &  Gill  in  Queen  Street,  in  1767. 


Scboolmaeter  15 

produced, — requires  no  additional  testimony  to  its  worth 
or  its  merits.  It  is  distinguished  for  simplicity,  compre- 
hension and  exactness."  Mr.  Quincy  knew  of  what  he 
spoke,  for  from  six  to  fourteen  years  of  age  he  studied 
the  Accidence  at  the  Phillips  Academy  at  Andover, 
Mass.,  where,  he  tells  us,  he  was  obliged  with  the  rest 
of  his  classmates,  *'to  get  by  heart  passages  of  a  book 
which  he  could  not,  from  his  years,  possibly  understand." 
But  by  means  of  this  Accidence^  or  in  spite  of  it,  as  his 
son  Edmund  says  in  his  biography  of  him,  he  laid  a 
foundation  of  Latin  knowledge  which  was  a  help  and 
delight  to  him  to  the  end  of  life ;  indeed,  it  became  his 
amusement  in  old  age. 

Other  testimonies  of  its  value  have  come  down  to  us. 
Samuel  Walker,  having  had  it  in  constant  use  for  his 
pupils  for  more  than  fifty  years  whenever  it  could  be 
obtained,  found  it  to  be  the  *'  best  book  for  beginners  in 
the  study  of  Latin  "  that  had  come  to  his  knowledge, 
"  no  work  of  its  kind  containing  so  much  useful  matter 
in  so  small  a  compass."  Another  testimony  (Rev.  T. 
M.  Harris)  declared  there  was  "  no  elementary  work 
so  well  calculated  for  the  beginners  as  Cheever's 
Accidence  —  pre-eminently  perspicuous,  concise  and 
comprehensive." 

That  Ezekiel  Cheever  also  wrote  on  religious  subjects 
is  seen  in  a  little  book  containing  three  short  essays, 
under  the  title.  Scripture  Prophecies  Explained, 
The  first  one  is  "  On  the  Restitution  of  all  Things,"  the 
second  "On  St.  John's  First  Resurrection,"  and  the  third 
*'On  the  Personal  Coming  of  Jesus  Christ,  as  Com- 


i6  EseFitel  Cbecver 

mencing  at  the  Beginning  of  the  Millennium  described  in 
the  Apocalypse."  Although  the  book  did  not  attain  to 
so  many  editions  as  the  Accidence^  it  continued  to  be 
issued  after  the  death  of  Mr.  Cheever;  as  late  as  1757 
an  edition  being  printed  by  Green  &  Russell  at  their 
printing  office  in  Qiieen  Street.  (Found  in  the  Boston 
Athenaeum.) 

There  are  also  in  existence  two  manuscript  books 
which  the  schoolmaster  owned  :  one  of  about  four  hun- 
dred pages  of  Latin  dissertations,  with  an  occasional 
mathematical  figure  drawn, — now  in  possession  of  the 
Massachusetts  Historical  Society, — and  one  kept  in  the 
safe  of  the  Boston  Athenaeum.  One  handles  reverently 
this  little  brown,  leather-covered  book  of  about  one 
hundred  and  twenty  pages,  on  the  first  of  which  is  the 
year  "  1631,"  and  on  the  second,  in  his  own  handwrit- 
ing, "  Ezekiel  Cheeuer,  his  booke."  In  it  are  nearly 
fifty  pages  of  Latin  poems,  besides  two  in  Greek,  copied 
before  the  life  in  America  began ;  also  a  few  shorthand 
notes  which  have  been  deciphered  as  Scripture  texts. 
Printed  in  full  for  the  first  time,  they  formed  an  appen- 
dix to  one  of  Mr.  John  T.  Hassam's  valuable  papers  in 
the  Nev)  England  Historical  and  Genealogical  Reg- 
ister (April,  1879).  On  the  last  page  of  this  quaint 
little  treasure  are  written  in  English  some  verses,  one  of 
which  can  be  clearly  read  as,  '*  Oh,  first  seek  the  kingdom 
of  God  and  his  Righteousness,  and  all  things  else  shall 
be  added  unto  you."* 

*  For  further  details  see  "The  Cheever  MSS."  in  the  New 
England  Historical  and  Genealogical  Register  for  January, 
1903- 


ScbooIma0ter  17 

After  Mr.  Cheever  had  taught  in  New  Haven  for 
about  twelve  years,  he  left  in  1650  to  become  master  of 
the  grammar,  or  free,  school  in  Ipswich,  Mass.  If 
one  can  judge  by  salary  received,  the  schoolmaster 
was  appreciated  in  New  Haven,  for  the  town  was  not 
willing  to  pay  his  successor  as  "  large  a  salary  as  it  had 
done  to  Mr.  Cheever."  The  successor  received  only 
ten  pounds  a  year. 

Ipswich  (or  Agawam)  was  then  a  town  of  less  than 
twenty  years'  experience.  Within  ten  years  of  its  settle- 
ment its  "  renowned  church,"  Mather  tells  us,  consisted 
mostly  of  "  such  illuminated  Christians  that  their  pastor 
in  the  exercise  of  their  ministry  had  not  so  much  disci- 
ples as  judges."  By  petition  of  Zaccheus  Gould  and 
others,  that  pait  of  the  village  some  seven  miles  to  the 
westward  called  "New  Meadows"  had  that  year 
become  incorporated  as  a  town  under  the  name  of 
Topsfield.  Salem  was  not  far  away.  Wenham  and 
Manchester  were  neighboring  townships  striving  to 
grow.  In  the  Wenham  church,  founded  six  years 
before,  the  Rev.  John  Fisk  was  doing  faithful  work, 
content,  as  Cotton  Mather  says  in  his  Magnalia^  "  with  a 
very  mean  salary,  and  consuming  his  own  fair  estate  for 
the  welfare  of  the  new  plantation."  Governor  Endicott 
owned  land  on  the  south  side  of  the  pretty  river  which 
still  winds  its  course  through  the  village.  Samuel 
Appleton  was  a  large  landowner.  Thomas  Dudley, 
Simon  Bradstreet,  Richard  Saltonstall,  and  others, 
whose  descendants  are  well  known  to-day,  were  identi- 
fied with  the  town.     Governor  Winthrop  had  not  been 


i8  j63ehtel  Cbeever 

long  dead,  while  his  son  John,  the  founder  of  the  town, 
had  special  interest  for  the  schoolmaster  for  his  more  or 
less  connection  with  the  Connecticut  and  New  Haven 
life. 

The  free  school  to  which  Mr.  Cheever  came  was  not 
a  public  school  as  we  mean  it  today.  A  forerunner  of 
the  academy,  it  was  one  endowed  with  grants  of  land 
and  bequests,  in  which  Latin  and  Greek  were  taught, 
supported  in  part  by  the  parents'  fees.  We  are  told 
that  the  schooling  of  Simon  Bradstreet,  when  placed  at 
the  "free  school"  in  Ipswich  by  his  father  after  his 
removal  to  Andover,  was  "  more  chargeable." 

In  1653,  while  Mr.  Cheever  taught  in  Ipswich,  a  phi- 
lanthropic citizen,  Robert  Payne,  gave  to  the  town,  in 
addition  to  a  schoolhouse,  a  dwelling  house  with  two 
acres  of  land  for  the  use  of  the  schoolmaster.  This  was 
in  line  with  the  accepted  idea  that  a  house  as  well  as  a 
school  building  should  be  provided  for  the  teacher. 

The  school  so  prospered  that  neighboring  towns  sent 
pupils  to  it.  Nathaniel  Saltonstall  was  there  prepared 
for  Harvard,  then  under  the  presidency  of  Charles 
Chauncy.  In  the  class  of  1659,  Master  Cheever  must 
have  been  especially  interested,  for  it  contained  the  name 
of  his  son  Samuel — Samuel  Cheverus.  This  firstborn 
son  seemed  to  be  a  favorite  of  his  father.  It  was  to  him 
he  wrote  the  epistles  in  Latin — now  in  the  Massachu- 
setts Historical  Society — which  the  Rev.  William  Bent- 
ley,  D.D.,  of  Salem,  Mass.,  said  "  were  worthy  of  the 
age  of  Erasmus  and  of  the  days  of  Ascham."  We  are 
indebted  to  a  descendant  of  this  firstborn,  Mr.  John  T. 


Scboolmaeter  19 

Hassam,  for  giving  to  the  public  for  the  first  time  in  full 
a  facsimile  of  one  of  these  Latin  letters.  Its  history  is 
interesting.  In  1879,  failing  to  find  what  he  wanted,  Mr. 
Hassam  printed  in  one  of  his  valuable  articles  on  the 
old  schoolmaster  a  fragment  of  a  letter  in  the  hope  it 
might  lead  to  the  recovery  of  the  whole.  Some  twelve 
years  later,  at  a  sale  of  autograph  letters  and  historical 
documents  collected  by  Prof.  E.  H.  Leffingwell,  of  New 
Haven,  Conn.,  the  city  of  Boston  purchased  some,  among 
them  being  the  original  letter  in  a  good  state  of  preser- 
vation. (Appendix  I.)  Although  the  year  is  not  on  it, 
Mr.  Hassam  thought  that  since  it  was  dated  November 
24th  impost  festurn)^  it  must  have  been  written  on 
Thanksgiving  day  of  1670,  since,  with  a  single  excep- 
tion during  the  colonial  period,  only  in  that  year  did 
Thanksgiving  come  on  that  day  of  the  month.  The  let- 
ter, which  begins  with  "  Chare  Jili"  and  ends  with  "  Tui 
studiosissi  -pater ^  Ez.  Cheever,"  reveals  the  father 
going  to  Cambridge  to  negotiate  as  to  the  marriage  of 
Samuel  with  Ruth,  daughter  of  Edmund  Angier,  and 
granddaughter  of  the  Rev.  Dr.  William  Ames  of  Hol- 
land University  fame,  whose  portrait  is  in  Memorial 
Hall,  Cambridge.  (Appendix  II.)  Not  finding  the 
father  at  home,  he  writes  that  he  communicated  with  the 
mother ;  but  she,  not  being  willing  to  commit  herself, 
referred  him  to  her  husband  and  daughter.  It  was  con- 
ceded that  the  young  lady  was  superior;  indeed,  was 
hard  to  win.  On  the  way  back  to  Boston  the  master 
says  he  met  the  father,  who  also  was  averse  to  commit- 
ting himself.     He  referred  all  to  the  daughter.     A  year 


20  lescFitel  Cbeever 

before  this,  the  father  had  written  a  letter  to  the  son  from 
Charlestown  about  the  young  woman,  which  Mr.  Has- 
sam  has  also  printed  in  full.  But  it  all  came  out  right ; 
for  in  June,  1671,  the  summer  after  the  father's  visit  to 
Cambridge,  Samuel,  then  nearly  thirty-two  years  of  age, 
is  married  to  the  Cambridge  young  lady.  He  was 
then  preaching  in  Marblehead  as  the  first  settled  minis- 
ter of  the  town.  There,  after  a  ministry  of  over  fifty 
years,  he  died  and  was  buried. 

During  Master  Cheever's  eleven  years  of  service  in 
Ipswich  as  schoolmaster,  Thomas  Dudley  and  John 
Endicott  were  among  the  governors  of  the  Massachu- 
setts Colony — then  under  its  first  charter — and  William 
Bradford  and  Edward  Winslow  among  those  of  the  Ply- 
mouth Colony.  John  Eliot  had  begun  his  monumental 
work  among  the  Indians ;  Louis  XIV.  was  working 
out  his  career  in  France ;  and  Oliver  Cromwell  was  end- 
ing his  heroic  struggle  in  England.  If  only  the  school- 
master had  jotted  down  his  thoughts  of  the  strange  power 
of  this  wonderful  man  of  the  people  !  or,  if  he  had 
left  on  record  some  of  the  things  he  must  have  heard  of 
the  "  Tenth  Muse,"  Anne  Bradstreet,  who,  though  then 
living  in  Andover,  had  written  most  of  her  poems  while 
residing  in  Ipswich  !  As  they  were  published  the  year 
of  his  arrival  there,  possibly  he  was  familiar  with  them. 
He  may  have  discussed  them  with  her.  Who  knows? 
She  may  have  told  him  of  one  of  her  admirers,  the  Rev. 
Nathaniel  Ward,  who  a  few  years  before  had  published 
what  was  perhaps  the  most  peculiar  book  of  the  colo- 
nial era,  "  The  Simple  Cobbler  of  Agawam  ;"  for,  though 


ScbooIma0ter  21 

now  gone  to  England,  he  had  been  a  neighbor  of  hers 
while  pastor  of  the  Ipswich  church.  The  school- 
master must  have  known  the  Rev.  Nathaniel  Rogers, 
who  died  while  he  taught  in  the  town  ;  also  Pastor  Nor- 
ton. One  wonders  if  he  ever  met  that  "  godly  man  of 
Ipswich"  of  whom  Cotton  Mather  tells,  who,  after  Mr. 
Norton  was  settled  in  Boston,  where  he  went  from 
Ipswich,  would  travel  on  foot  to  that  town,  almost 
thirty  miles,  "  for  nothing  but  the  weekly  lecture  there." 
He  declared  it  was  "worth  a  great  journey  to  be  a  par- 
taker in  one  of  Mr.  Norton's  prayers." 

But  if  the  practical  schoolmaster  was  not  so  much  in- 
terested in  the  prayers  of  the  Rev.  John  Norton,  he  was 
doubtless  a  reader  of  his  Latin  book,  which  he  wrote  in 
1645  by  order  of  the  New  England  ministers,  to  answer 
the  question  of  divines  in  Zealand  concerning  the  New 
England  church  government.  He  may  also  have  read 
The  Orthodox  Evangelist^  which  he  dedicated  to  his  Ips- 
wich church,  and  other  of  his  treatises.  {Magnalta.) 
Would  we  had  some  of  the  opinions  of  this  learned,  re- 
ligious schoolmaster  concerning  the  books  of  that  day ! 
What  did  he  think  of  the  popular  Day  of  Doom^  which 
his  little  pupil  of  years  before  published  in  his  later 
years?  Did  he  enter  into  the  spirit  of  the  Bay  Psalm 
Book^  which  must  have  been  known  and  used  during 
his  Ipswich  life  ?  Did  he  enjoy  the  Ames's  Almanacks, 
with  their  literary  and  amusing  quotations?  Was  he 
conversant  with  Shakespeare  and  Cervantes,  who  had 
been  dead  only  a  little  over  thirty  years  ?  Had  he  ever 
heard   of   Raphael,   Michael    Angelo   and   other   great 


22  jB^c\{icl  Cbeever 

painters?  But  if  we  do  not  know  this,  we  do  know 
that  he  was  interested  in  the  village,  for  he  planted  an 
orchard  and  built  a  barn  on  the  land  he  owned ;  all  of 
which,  on  his  removal  from  the  town,  was  purchased 
by  the  Feoffers  and  added  to  the  grammar  school 
property.  We  know,  too,  by  an  ancient  petition  signed 
by  him  while  teacher  there  (now  owned  by  the  Ipswich 
Historical  Society),  that  he  prayed  for  a  withholding  of 
an  innholder's  license  from  an  unworthy  innkeeper; 
indeed,  it  is  thought  he  wrote  it. 

We  also  know  that  while  living  in  Ipswich  he  married 
(1652)  for  his  second  wife,  Ellen  Lathrop,  sister  of 
Captain  Thomas  Lathrop  of  Beverly,  who,  two  years 
before,  had  brought  her  from  England  with  the  promise 
of  being  a  father  to  her.  Of  the  children  born  there, — 
Abigail,  Ezekiel,  Nathaniel  and  Thomas, — Ezekiel  ap- 
pears in  the  annals  of  the  village  parish  of  Salem  as  late 
as  1731 ;  while  Thomas,  after  graduating  at  Harvard  in 
1677,  became  a  clergyman  in  Maiden,  Mass.,  and  later 
at  Rumney  Marsh  (afterwards  Chelsea),  where  he  died 
at  the  age  of  ninety-one.  His  son  Ezekiel  became  an 
honored  resident  of  Charlestown,  to  whom  was  granted 
the  building  of  the  tomb  on  old  "  Burial  Hill"  (at  the 
end  of  Phipps  Place) ,  where  John  Harvard  was  buried 
the  year  after  Master  Cheever  came  to  Boston.  Stamped 
with  armorial  bearings  and  the  inscription  "Ezekiel 
Cheever,  Esq.  His  Tomb,  1744,"  it  has  not  only  a 
special  interest  to  Cheever  descendants,  but  to  all  inter- 
ested in  colonial  affairs. 

Today,  a  visitor  to  Ipswich  sees  on  a  granite  monu- 


\  . 


IPSWICH    MONUMENT 


Scboolmaeter  23 

ment  erected  in  1896  on  the  pretty  green  where  he 
taught  and  lived,  the  name  of  Schoolmaster  Cheever 
as  one  of  the  ever-to-be-remembered  influences  in  the 
development  of  the  people.  It  has  even  been  said  that 
his  labors  there  were  chiefly  instrumental  in  placing 
that  town  "in  literature  and  population  above  all  the 
towns  of  Essex  County."  (Bentley.)  In  his  address 
upon  the  unveiling  of  the  memorial  (a  gift  of  an 
Appleton),  Rev.  T.  Frank  Waters,  President  of  the 
Ipswich  Historical  Society,  said  that  "were  those 
eleven  years  in  which  he  wrought  the  end  of  that  fine 
effort  for  advanced  education  in  our  midst,  it  would  be 
a  luminous  epoch  in  our  annals.  But  the  school  con- 
tinued when  he  was  called  to  Charlestown.  The  town 
granted  for  its  support  a  great  farm  in  Chebacco. 
William  Paine  made  gift  of  Little  Neck^  and  the 
revenue  from  these  properties  made  helpful  contribu- 
tions to  its  support,  as  it  does  still  to  our  High  School. 
Yonder  corner,"  he  declared,  "  is  forever  hallowed  by 
the  memories  of  the  prayers  and  toils  of  that  one  great 
teacher." 

After  a  record  of  eleven  years  in  Ipswich,  Mr. 
Cheever  removed  to  Charlestown  (1661)  to  become 
master  of  the  school  there  at  a  salary  of  thirty  pounds  a 
year.  This  salary  seems  small  indeed ;  but  when  we 
read  that  this  faitMul  teacher  was  at  last  obliged  to 
petition  the  selectmen  for  even  this  small  pay,  "  since 
the  constables  were  much  behind  with  him,"  the  situa- 
tion becomes  pathetic.  He  asked  later  that  the  school- 
house  be  repaired.     In  1669  he  is  again  before  the  town, 


34  jescf^tel  Cbeever 

asking  for  a  "piece  of  ground  or  house  plott  whereon 
to  build  an  house  for  his  familie,"  which  petition  he 
left  for  the  townsmen  to  consider.  They  voted  in  favor 
of  the  request,  but  as  Mr.  Cheever  was  called  the  fol- 
lowing year  to  Boston,  it  is  probable  that  his  successor 
had  the  benefit  of  it. 

After  teaching  in  Charlestown  nine  years,  Mr. 
Cheever  accepted  the  invitation  of  Boston  town  to 
become  master  of  its  Latin  School.  This  was  in  Jan- 
uary, 1 67 1.  He  was  then  fifty-seven  years  old,  and  had 
taught  school  over  thirty  years.  He  had  seen  the  de- 
velopment of  his  own  land,  and  had  doubtless  felt  the 
pulse  of  his  native  England,  where  Milton,  old  and 
blind,  was  still  living.  Perhaps  he  had  read  the  Para- 
dise Lost  of  his  English  contemporary,  since  it  had 
been  published  several  years.  He  doubtless  knew  of 
Dryden,  who,  two  years  before,  under  Charles  II.,  had 
become  poet  laureate.  Alexander  Pope  was  not  born. 
Louis  XIV.  was  still  ruling  France.  Richard  Belling- 
ham  was  Governor  of  the  Massachusetts  Colony,  which, 
before  Master  Cheever' s  long  service  should  end,  would 
become  one  with  the  Plymouth. 

The  Boston  school  to  which  Mr.  Cheever  now  came 
had  been  in  existence  thirty-five  years.  It  remained  for 
a  descendant  of  the  old  master,  the  Rev.  Henry  F. 
Jenks,  to  give  to  the  public  in  his  "  History  of  the 
Latin  School,"  an  interesting  account  of  the  time- 
honored  institution.  Founded  by  an  agreement  among 
the  first  citizens  of  Boston  led  by  Governor  Win- 
throp,  it  antedated  even  Harvard  College.     Dr.  Edward 


ScbooIma0ter  25 

Everett  Hale,  as  President  of  the  Boston  Latin  School 
Association,  has  also  told  of  its  history.  (Appendix 
III.)  A  bronze  tablet  in  the  rear  of  King's  Chapel 
now  marks  the  spot  where  the  first  schoolhouse  stood ; 
later  it  was  across  the  street.  The  different  names  of 
this  street — School-House  Lane,  South  Latin  Grammar 
School,  etc. — were  in  1708  by  vote  of  the  town,  merged 
into  that  of  the  one  it  bears  to-day — School  Street. 
Prominent  men  of  the  day  lived  near.  Judge  Sewall 
was  a  familiar  figure  walking  from  his  home,  not  far 
away,  to  the  meetinghouse  on  what  is  now  Washington 
Street.  As  a  personal  friend  of  Master  Cheever,  he 
visited  him  in  the  schoolhouse.  In  his  Diary  (dated  Sep- 
tember 13,  1686)  he  says  that  as  he  went  "  in  the  morn 
to  hear  Cotton  Mather  preach  the  Election  Sermon  for 
the  Artillery  at  Charlestown,"  he  "had  Sam  to  the 
Latin  school,  which  is  the  first  time."  He  declares 
that  "  Mr.  Cheever  received  him  gladly."  Together  he 
and  the  master  may  have  gone  to  hear  the  son,  the  Rev. 
Samuel  Cheever,  preach  the  Artillery  Election  Sermon 
(1684)  from  the  text  Hebrew  ii.  10,  "For  it  became 
him,  for  whom  are  all  things,  and  by  whom  are  all 
things,  in  bringing  many  sons  unto  glory,  to  make  the 
Captain  of  their  salvation  perfect  through  sufferings." 
Or  they  may  have  gone  together  to  the  weekly  Thursday 
lecture,  for  which  the  school  was  dismissed  at  ten 
o'clock;  on  other  days  it  closed  at  eleven.  With  an 
attendamus  to  a  short  prayer,  it  opened  at  seven  in 
the  morning  during  summer  and  at  eight  in  the  winter. 
All  the  year  round  it  began  at  one  in  the  aftei'noon,  and, 


26  EjcFitel  Cbeever 

with  a  deponite  libros^  closed  at  five.  Here  boys  learned 
their  Latin  Accidence^  and  went  to  Harvard,  which  for 
two  generations  was  the  only  college  in  New  England. 
In  Greek  they  read  mostly  the  New  Testament.  Cotton 
Mather  says  it  was  noted  that  when  "  Scholars  came  to 
be  admitted  into  the  College,  they  who  came  from 
Cheeverian  Education  were  generally  the  most  unex- 
ceptionable." Sibley  tells  us  that  an  Ipswich  pupil, 
Simon  Bradstreet,  of  Harvard,  1660,  was  not  only  noted 
as  defending  the  position,  Omnes  Artes  Accidentur 
Theologicc^  but,  when  he  '♦  went  out  Master  of  Arts" 
in  1663,  as  defending  the  thesis,  Discremen  Boni  et 
malt  Cognoscitur  a  lege  Naturce.  Another  pupil, 
John  Leverett,  of  the  Boston  Latin  School,  was  the 
Latin  salutatorian  of  his  class  of  1680.  We  are  also 
told  {^Historical  Register)  that  when  Nehemiah 
Walter,  who  married  a  daughter  of  Increase  Mather, 
was  taken  to  the  "  famous  Mr.  Cheever  with  a  view  to 
his  preparing  him  for  college,"  Mr.  Cheever  returned 
him  to  his  father,  after  a  "short  examination  and  ex- 
periment," with  a  "great  encomium,  pronouncing  him 
already  well  stocked  with  classic  learning,  and  abun- 
dantly finished  to  enter  upon  academical  studies."  Such 
results  would  be  natural  from  the  fact  which  Mather 
tells,  that  his  "  Master  went  thro'  this  Hard  Work  with 
so  much  Delight  in  it,  as  a  Work  for  God  and  Christ 
and  his  People." 

Besides  their  book  knowledge,  the  old  master  had  an 
interest  in  his  pupils'  personal  welfare.  Possibly  he  was 
reminded  of  his  own  young  days,  when,  asa  "  Blue  Coat 


Scboolmaeter  27 

Boy"  in  London,  with  the  tails  of  his  long  blue  coat 
tucked  up  under  his  leather  belt,  he  had  played  in  the 
open  space  of  the  school  buildings  in  Newgate  Street  in 
the  same  "  Christ's  Hospital  "  which  we  know  today.* 
Doubtless  he  told  them  of  his  annual  Easter  march  with 
the  boys  to  the  Mansion  House,  where  the  Lord  Mayor 
gave  them  buns,  coins,  etc.,  with  elaborate  ceremony; 
a  march  taken  by  Charles  Lamb,  Coleridge,  Leigh 
Hunt,  and  so  many  other  little  Blue  Coat  Boys  in  the 
many  years  since  Edward  VI.,  in  1552,  founded  the 
school.  However  this  may  be,  in  his  service  now  as 
schoolmaster,  this  seven  years'  experience  as  a  Blue 
Coat  Boy  (1626-1633)  must  have  allied  him  more 
closely  to  a  schoolmaster  in  the  neighboring  town  of 
Cambridge,  Elijah  Corlet,  who,  Waters  tells  us,  was 
also  a  Blue  Coat  Boy.f 

For  his  service  as  Latin  School  master  in  "  the  Metrop- 
olis of  the  English  America" — as  the  pastor  of  the 
North  Church  called  Boston — Mr.  Cheever  received  a 
salary  of  sixty  pounds  a  year.  This  was  more  than  his 
friend  Elijah  Corlet  received ;  for  according  to  the  town 
records,  only  a  few  years  before,  Cambridge  had  voted 
him  an  annual  salary  of  twenty  pounds  so  long  as  he 
should  continue  to  be  schoolmaster  in  that  place ;  and 
there  seems  to  be  no  evidence  that  this  man  of  ♦'  learn- 
ing, piety  and  respectability,"  of  "abilities,  dexterity 
and   painfulnesse "   in   teaching  youths   for   over  forty 


*  The  hospital  was  removed  to  Horsham,  Sussex,  in  1902. 

t  For  further  particulars  of  the  Blue  Coat  Boys  see  Annals  of 
Chrisfs  Hospital,  hy  E.  H.  Pearce;  also  TroUope's  History  of 
Chrisfs  Hospital. 


38  fi3cFiiel  Cbeever 

years  as  master  of  the  grammar  school  by  the  side  of 
Harvard  College,  ever  received  more.  But  for  his 
*' extraordinary  paines"  in  teaching  the  Indians  designed 
for  Hai-vard  he  received  compensation  from  the  Society 
for  Propagating  the  Gospel. 

But  if  Master  Cheever  had  the  name  of  receiving  a 
salary  of  sixty  pounds  a  year  in  Boston,  as  in  Charles- 
town,  he  had  difficulty  in  getting  it;  for  in  1687-1688  he 
is  sending  the  following  petition  to  His  Excellency  Sir 
Edmund  Andros,  "Knight,  Governor,  and  Captain 
General  of  His  Majesty's  Territories  and  Dominions  in 
New  England,"  for  the  fifty-five  pounds  due  him, 
"  having  been  near  fifty  years  employed  in  the  work  and 
office  of  a  public  Grammar  Schoolmaster  "  : — 

"  The  humble  peticon  of  Ezekiel  Cheever  of  Boston, 
Schoolmr.  Sheweth  that  your  poor  peticoner  hath 
now  fifty  years  been  employed  in  ye  work  and  office  of 
a  publick  Grammar-Schoolmr.  in  several  places  in  this 
Country,  with  what  acceptance  &  success  I  submit  to 
the  judgment  of  those  that  are  able  to  testify.  Now 
seeing  God  is  pleased,  mercifully  yet  to  continue  my 
wonted  abilities  of  mind,  health  of  body,  vivacity  of 
spirit,  delight  in  my  work,  which  alone  I  am  in  any  way 
fit  for,  &  capable  of,  &  whereby  I  have  my  outward  sub- 
sistance.  I  most  humbly  entreat  your  Excellency,  yet 
according  to  your  former  kindness  often  manifested,  I 
may  by  your  Excellencies  favor,  allowance,  &  encour- 
agement still  be  continued  in  my  present  place.  And 
whereas  there  is  due  to  me  about  fifty-five  pounds  for 
my  labours  past  &  ye  former  way  of  that  part  of  my 
maintenance  usually  raised  by  a  rate,  is  thought  good  to 
be  altered,  I  with  all  submission  beseech  your  Excel- 


Scboolmaeter  29 

lency  that  you  would  be  pleased  to  give  order  for  my 
due  satisfaction,  ye  want  of  which  would  fall  heavy 
upon  me  in  my  old  age,  and  my  children  also  who  are 
otherwise  poor  enough. 

"  And  your  poor  peticoner  shall  ever  pray. 

"  I  am  Excellencies  most  humble  servt. 

EZKKIKL  ChEEVER." 

It  is  thought  that  Mr.  Cheever  lived  in  the  school 
building,  since  besides  his  salary  he  was  to  have 
"  possession  and  use  of  ye  schoole-house."  But  after  a 
while  the  selectmen  were  making  arrangements  for  a 
house  to  be  built  for  him,  in  accordance  with  the  vote 
of  the  town  (March,  1701)  that  a  "  House  be  built  for 
Old  Mr.  Eze'k  Cheever,  the  Latin  School-Master,"  and 
that  the  "  Selectmen  Take  Care  about  the  Building  of 
it."  The  following  details  of  the  agreement  made  with 
Captain  John  Barnet  concerning  the  house  as  found  in 
the  old  records  are  suggestive  indeed  :  — 

"  That  the  said  Barnet  shall  erect  a  House  on  the  Land 
where  Mr.  Ezekiel  Cheever  Lately  dwelt,  of  forty  foot 
Long  Twenty  foot  wide  and  Twenty  foot  stud  with 
four  foot  Rise  in  the  Roof,  to  make  a  cellar  floor  under 
one  half  of  S*  house  and  to  build  a  Kitchen  of  Sixteen 
foot  in  Length  and  twelve  foot  in  breadth  with  a 
Chamber  therein,  and  to  Lay  the  floors  flush  through 
out  the  maine  house  and  to  make  three  paire  of  Stayers 
in  y®  main  house  and  one  paire  in  the  Kitchen  and  to 
Inclose  s^  house  and  to  do  and  complete  all  carpenters 
worke  and  to  find  all  timber  boards  clapboards  nayles 
glass  and  Glaziers  worke  and  Iron  worke  and  to  make 
one  Cellar  door  and  to  finde  one  Lock  for  the  Outer 
door  of  said  House,  and  also  to  make  the  Casements  for 


30  jes^ifttel  Cbeever 

S*  house,  and  perform  S*  worke  and  to  finish  S**  build- 
ing by  the  first  day  of  August  next.  In  consideration 
whereof  the  Selectmen  do  agree  that  the  S**  Capt. 
Barnet  shall  have  the  Old  Timber  boards  Iron  worke 
and  glass  of  the  Old  house  now  Standing  on  S^  Land 
and  to  pay  unto  him  the  Sum  of  one  hundred  and  thirty 
pounds  money,  that  is  to  say  forty  pounds  down  in 
hand  and  the  rest  as  the  worke  goes  on." 

Then  follows  the  agreement  for  the  "  masons'  worke" 
in  all  its  details.  Later  on,  in  March,  1702,  there  is 
some  discussion  as  to  how  far  back  from  the  street  the 
house  should  be  placed.  But  in  June  of  that  year  the 
house  is  up,  for  the  worthy  dignitaries  order  that  "  Capt. 
John  Barnard  do  provide  a  Raysing  Dinner  for  the  Rays- 
ing  the  Schoolmasters  House  at  the  Charge  of  the  town  not 
exceeding  the  Sum  of  Three  pounds."  This  was  done, 
for  later  they  order  the  "  noat  for  three  pounds,  ex- 
pended by  him  for  a  dinner  at  Raysing  the  School- 
masters House,"  be  paid  him. 

After  Mr.  Cheever's  house  had  received  all  this  pains- 
taking attention,  the  town  voted  that  a  "  New  School 
House  be  built  instead  of  the  Old  School  House  in 
which  Mr.  Ezekiel  Cheever  Teacheth,  and  it  is  Left 
with  the  Selectmen  to  get  the  same  accomplished." 
The  particulars  of  this  work  are  given  with  as  much 
detail  in  the  Selectmen's  Minutes  of  July  24,  1704,  as 
those  of  the  House  : — 

"Agreed  w*  M'  John  Barnerd  as  followeth,  he  to 
build  a  new  School  House  of  ft»rty  foot  Long  Twenty 
five  foot  wide  and  Eleven  foot  Stud,  with  eight  win- 
dows below  and  five  in  the  Roofe,  with  wooden  Case- 


Scboolmaster  3^ 

ments  to  the  eight  Windows,  to  Lay  the  lower  floor 
with  Sleepers  &  double  boards  So  far  as  needful,  and 
the  Chamber  floor  with  Single  boards,  to  board  below 
the  plate  inside  &  inside  and  out,  to  Clapboard  the  Outside 
and  Shingle  the  Roof,  to  make  a  place  to  hang  the  Bell 
in,  to  make  a  paire  of  Staires  up  to  the  Chamber,  and 
from  thence  a  Ladder  to  the  bell,  to  make  one  door  next 
the  Street,  and  a  petition  Cross  the  house  below,  and  to 
make  three  rows  of  benches  for  the  boyes  on  each  Side 
of  the  room,  to  find  all  Timber,  boards.  Clapboards 
shingles  nayles  hinges.  In  consideration  whereof  the 
s^  M'  John  Barnerd  is  to  be  paid  One  hundred  pounds, 
and  to  have  the  Timber,  Boards,  and  Iron  worke  of  the 
Old  School  House." 

Would  we  had  :oday  the  names  of  the  boys,  some- 
times over  a  hundred  at  a  time,  who  sat  on  these 
benches,  as  well  as  a  record  of  the  daily  events !  If 
we  have  not  these,  we  have  the  schoolmaster  and  the 
school,  as  pictured  by  Hawthorne  in  his  "  Grandfather's 
Chair,"  where  on  a  winter's  day  he  takes  a  peep  into 
the  schoolroom — "a  large,  dingy  room,  with  a  sanded 
floor,  lighted  by  windows  that  turn  on  hinges  and  have 
little  diamond-shaped  panes  of  glass."  From  the  large 
fireplace  at  one  end  of  the  room  a  bright  blaze  went 
leaping  up  the  chimney  from  the  great  logs  of  wood. 
Every  few  moments  a  cloud  of  smoke  is  puffed  into  the 
room,  sailing  "slowly  over  the  heads  of  the  scholars 
until  it  gradually  settles  upon  the  walls  and  ceiling, 
already  blackened  with  the  smoke  of  years."  On  long 
benches  with  desks  before  them  sit  the  pupils  before 
the  "venerable  schoolmaster,  severe  in  aspect,  with  a 
black  skull  cap  on  his  head,  like  the  ancient  Puritan, 


32  lescKiel  Cbeever 

and  the  snow  of  his  white  beard  drifting  down  to  his 
very  girdle.  ...  A  rod  of  birch  is  hanging  over  the 
fireplace,  and  a  heavy  ferule  lies  on  the  master's  desk. 
,  .  .  Buz  !  buz  !  buz  !  Amid  just  such  a  murmur  has 
Master  Cheever  spent  above  sixty  years ;  and  long  habit 
has  made  it  as  pleasant  to  him  as  the  hum  of  a  bee-hive 
when  the  insects  are  busy  in  the  sunshine.  .  .  .  Now  a 
class  in  Latin  is  called  to  recite.  Forth  steps  a  row  of 
queer-looking  little  fellows  wearing  square-skirted  coats 
and  small-clothes,  with  buttons  at  the  knee.  They  look 
like  so  many  grandfathers  in  their  second  childhood. 
These  lads  are  to  be  sent  to  Cambridge  and  educated  for 
the  learned  professions.  Old  Master  Cheever  has  lived 
so  long,  and  seen  so  many  generations  of  schoolboys 
grow  up  to  be  men,  that  now  he  can  almost  prophesy 
what  sort  of  a  man  each  boy  will  be.  One  urchin  shall 
hereafter  be  a  doctor,  and  administer  pills  and  potions, 
and  stalk  gravely  through  life,  perfumed  with  assafcEtida. 
Another  shall  wrangle  at  the  bar,  and  fight  his  way  to 
wealth  and  honors,  and,  in  his  declining  age,  shall  be  a 
worshipful  member  of  His  Majesty's  Council.  A  third 
— and  he  the  master's  favorite — shall  be  a  worthy  suc- 
cessor to  the  old  Puritan  ministers  now  in  their  graves ; 
he  shall  preach  with  great  unction  and  effect,  and  leave 
volumes  of  sermons  in  print  and  manuscript  for  the 
benefit  of  future  generations.  But,  as  they  are  merely 
schoolboys  now,  their  business  is  to  construe  Virgil. 
Poor  Virgil,  whose  verses,  which  he  took  so  much  pains 
to  polish,  have  been  mis-scanned,  and  mis-parsed,  and 
mis-interpreted  by  so  many  generations  of  idle  school- 


ScbooIma0ter  33 

boys  !  There,  sit  down,  ye  Latinists.  Two  or  three  of 
you  I  fear  are  doomed  to  feel  the  master's  ferule.  .  .  . 
Next  comes  a  class  in  arithmetic.  These  boys  are  to 
be  merchants,  shop-keepers  and  mechanics  of  a  future 
period.  Hitherto  they  have  traded  only  in  marbles  and 
apples.  Hereafter  some  will  send  vessels  to  England 
for  broadcloths,  and  all  sorts  of  manufactured  wares, 
and  to  the  West  Indies  for  sugar  and  rum  and  coffee. 
Others  will  stand  behind  counters  and  measure  tape  and 
ribbon  and  cambric  by  the  yard.  Others  will  upheave  the 
blacksmith's  hammer  or  take  the  lapstone  and  the  awl 
and  learn  the  trade  of  shoemaking.  Many  will  follow  the 
sea,  and  become  bold,  rough  sea-captains.  This  class 
of  boys,  in  short,  must  supply  the  world  with  those 
active,  skilful  hands,  and  clear,  sagacious  heads  without 
which  the  affairs  of  life  would  be  thrown  into  confusion 
by  the  theories  of  studious  and  visionary  men.  Where- 
fore, teach  them  their  multiplication  table,  good  Master 
Cheever,  and  whip  them  well  when  they  deserve  it ;  for 
much  of  the  country's  welfare  depends  on  these  boys. 
But,  alas  !  while  we  have  been  thinking  of  other  matters 
Master  Cheever' s  watchful  eye  has  caught  two  boys  at 
play.  Now  we  shall  see  awful  times.  Master  Cheever 
has  taken  down  that  terrible  birch  rod !  Short  is  the 
trial — the  sentence  quickly  passed — and  now  the  judge 
prepares  to  execute  it  in  person.  Thwack  !  Thwack  ! 
Thwack!  In  these  good  old  times  a  schoolmaster's 
blows  were  well  laid  on.  See !  the  birch  rod  has  lost 
several  of  its  twigs.  Mercy  on  us,  what  a  bellowing 
the   urchins    make !      My   ears   are    almost   deafened, 


34  i63efttel  Cbeever 

though  the  clamor  comes  through  the  far  length  of  a 
hundred  and  fifty  years.  There,  go  to  your  seats,  poor 
boys ;  and  do  not  cry,  sweet  little  Alice,  for  they  have 
ceased  to  feel  the  pain  a  long  time  since.  And  thus  the 
forenoon  passes  away.  Now  it  is  twelve  o'clock.  The 
master  looks  at  his  great  silver  watch,  and  then,  with 
tiresome  deliberation,  puts  the  ferule  into  his  desk. 
The  little  multitude  await  the  word  of  dismissal  with 
almost  irrepressible  impatience. 

"'You  are  dismissed,'  says  Master  Cheever.  The 
boys  retire,  treading  softly  until  they  have  passed  the 
threshold ;  but  fairly  out  of  the  schoolroom,  lo,  what  a 
joyous  shout !  what  a  scampering  and  tramping  of  feet ! 
what  a  sense  of  recovered  freedom  expressed  in  the 
merry  uproar  of  all  their  voices !  What  care  they  for 
the  ferule  and  birch  rod  now?  Were  boys  created 
merely  to  study  Latin  and  arithmetic?  No.  Happy 
boys !  Enjoy  your  playtime  now,  and  come  again  to 
study  and  to  feel  the  birch  rod  and  the  ferule  to-morrow ; 
not  till  to-morrow ;  for  today  is  Thursday-lecture,  and 
ever  since  the  settlement  of  Massachusetts  there  has  been 
no  school  on  Thursday  afternoons. 

"  Now  the  master  has  set  everything  to  rights,  and  is 
ready  to  go  home  to  dinner.  Yet  he  goes  reluctantly. 
The  old  man  has  spent  so  much  of  his  life  in  the  smoky, 
noisy,  buzzing  schoolroom,  that  when  he  has  a  holiday 
he  feels  as  if  his  place  were  lost,  and  himself  a  stranger 
in  the  world.  But  forth  he  goes  —  and  then  stands  our 
old  chair  vacant  and  solitary." 

This  is  the  school  as  seen  by  the  eye  of  genius.     But 


Scboolmaeter  35 

what  is  even  better,  there  are  some  reminiscences  pre- 
served by  old  pupils.  Cotton  Mather,  recalling  these 
days  of  his  master  to  his  son  Samuel  in  a  manuscript 
left  him  i^Paterna)^  tells  how  at  the  age  of  a  little  more 
than  eleven  years  he  had  composed  many  Latin  exer- 
cises, both  in  prose  and  verse,  and  could  speak  Latin  so 
readily  that  he  could  write  in  it  notes  of  sermons  of  the 
English  preacher.  He  also  declares  that  he  had  con- 
versed with  Cato,  Corderius,  Terence,  Tully,  Ovid,  and 
Virgil ;  had  made  epistles  and  themes,  presenting  his 
first  theme  to  his  master  without  his  requiring  or  expect- 
ing any  such  thing  of  him.  For  this  he  had  been  com- 
plimented by  the  master  with,  Laudabilis  diligentia 
tua  (Your  diligence  is  praiseworthy).  Besides  going 
through  a  great  part  of  the  New  Testament  in  Greek, 
he  had  read  considerable  in  Socrates  and  Homer,  and 
had  made  some  entrance  in  Hebrew  grammar.  And  all 
this  "  laudable  proficiency,"  as  his  son  calls  it  in  his 
biography  of  him,  was  made  under  the  "famous  Mr. 
Ezekiel  Cheever,"  whom  he  calls  "a  very  learned, 
pious  man,  and  an  excellent  Schoolmaster."  Cotton 
Mather  still  further  tells  how  his  loved  master  prayed 
with  them  every  day,  and  catechised  them  every  week ; 
how  he  "let  fal.  such  Holy  Counsels"  upon  them, 
took  so  many  occasions  to  make  speeches  unto  them 
*'that  should  make  them  afraid  of  sin,  and  incurring 
the  fearful  judgments  of  God  by  sin,"  that  he  felt 
impelled  "to  propose  him  for  Imitation."  Out  of 
the  school  he  said  he  was  "  A  Christian  of  the  Old 
Fashion ;    An   Old    new   English   Christian  .  .  .  well 


36  jescFitel  Cbeever 

Studied  in  the  Body  of  Divinity ;  an  able  Defender  of 
the  Faith  and  Order  of  the  Gospel ;  notably  Conversant 
and  Acquainted  with  the  Scriptural  Prophecies  ...  as 
Venerable  a  Sight  as  the  World  since  the  Days  of  Prim- 
itive Christianity  has  ever  looked  upon." 

Another  pupil,  Rev.  John  Barnard,  of  Marblehead, 
in  his  Autobiography  (now  in  the  Massachusetts  His- 
torical Society)  tells  of  having  been  sent  as  a  boy  "to 
the  Grammar  school,  under  the  tuition  of  the  aged, 
venerable,  and  justly  famous,  Mr.  Ezekiel  Cheever." 
"  Once  in  making  a  piece  of  Latin,"  he  says,  "  my 
Master  found  fault  with  the  syntax  of  one  word  which 
was  not  so  used  by  me  heedlessly,  but  designedly,  and 
therefore  I  told  him  there  was  a  plain  grammar  rule  for 
it."  He  angrily  replied  there  was  no  such  rule.  I  took 
the  grammar  and  showed  the  rule  to  him.  Then  he 
smiling  said:  "Thou  art  a  brave  boy.  I  had  forgot 
it."  "And  no  wonder,"  Mr.  Barnard  lovingly  adds, 
"for  he  was  then  above  eighty  years  old."  A  Latin 
School  boy  of  this  latter  day  (Phillips  Brooks)  calls  this 
incident,  after  letting  the  "serious  face  of  the  school- 
master pass  smiling  out  of  our  sight,"  the  "  very  hero- 
ism of  school-teaching."  Mr.  Barnard  also  refers  to 
the  turning  of  y^sop^ s  Fables  into  Latin  verse  as  one 
of  the  "  exercises  Master  put  our  Class  upon." 

Not  only  as  a  pupil,  however,  but  as  a  colleague  of 
his  son  Samuel  in  the  Marblehead  church  did  Mr. 
Barnard  have  special  remembrance  of  the  old  school- 
master. It  was  he  who  preached  the  funeral  sermon  of 
Samuel  —  his  predecessor  —  to   whom,  years   after  the 


Scboolmaster  ^^ 

father  had  been  laid  to  rest,  he  refers  in  his  Sketch  of 
Eminent  Ministers  as  "of  great  classick  learning,  a 
good  preacher,  a  thorough  Christian  and  a  prudent  man." 
(Appendix  IV.) 

In  his  Literary  Diary  (April  25,  1772)  Ezra  Stiles, 
President  of  Yale  College,  tells  of  seeing  in  the  rev- 
erend and  aged  Mr.  Samuel  Maxwell,  of  Warren,  R.  I., 
a  man  who  had  been  acquainted  with  one  of  the  "  origi- 
nal and  first  settlers  of  New  England,  now  a  rarity," 
who  told  him  that  he  well  knew  the  famous  grammar 
schoolteacher  Mr.  Ezekiel  Cheever,  of  Boston,  author  of 
the  Accidence;  that  he  wore  a  long  white  beard  termi- 
nating in  a  point ;  that  when  he  stroked  his  beard  to  the 
point,  it  was  a  sign  for  the  boys  to  stand  clear. 

With  increase  of  pupils,  Mr.  Cheever  began  to  hire 
an  assistant  at  his  own  expense.  But  in  March,  1699, 
at  a  public  meeting  of  the  inhabitants  of  Boston,  it 
was  voted  that  the  selectmen  arrange  for  such.  Thus 
it  happened  that  not  long  after,  Mr.  Ezekiel  Lewis,  a 
grandson  of  the  old  master  then  eighty-five  years  old, 
became  his  assistant,  at  a  salary  of  forty  pounds  a  year. 
This,  however,  not  proving  sufficient,  his  request  later 
(1701)  for  forty-five  pounds  a  year  was  granted.  Two 
years  after  this,  the  town  is  paying  Mr.  Nathaniel  Wil- 
liams, the  assistant  who  took  his  place,  eighty  pounds 
a  year.  This  Boston  boy  had  been  a  pupil  of  the  school 
and  of  Harvard.  In  the  funeral  oration  which  the 
pastor  of  the  Old  South,  Rev.  Thomas  Prince,  de- 
livered at  the  time  of  his  death  years  after  (1738),  he 
declared  that  in  this  "  laborious  and  important  service  " 


38  jescftlel  Cbeever 

as  colleague  and  successor  of  Master  Cheever,  "by  an 
agreeable  mixture  of  majesty  and  sweetness,  both  in  his 
Voice  and  countenance,  with  a  mild  and  steady  conduct, 
he  happily  ruled  and  was  generally  both  reverenced  and 
beloved."  He  referred  to  the  Latin  School  as  being 
then  "the  only  Publick  and  Free  Grammar  School  of 
the  Great  Town,  the  Principal  School  of  the  British 
Colonies,  if  not  of  all  America." 

The  last  two  years  of  Mr.  Cheever' s  life  were  made 
more  lonely  by  the  death  of  his  wife.  But  he  had  the 
loving  care  of  his  youngest  daughter,  Susannah,  who 
had  married,  in  1693,  Mr.  Joseph  Russell.  He  had 
also  faithful  friends.  Judge  Sewall  gave  him  his 
affection  to  the  end.  In  his  Diary  he  tells  of  his 
visiting  him  when  he  had  entered  his  eighty-eighth  year, 
being  the  oldest  man  in  town.  At  another  time  he 
says:  "Master  Cheever,  his  coming  to  me  last  Satur- 
day, January  31,  on  purpose  to  tell  me  he  blessed 
God  that  I  had  stood  up  for  the  Truth  is  more  com- 
fort to  me  than  Mr.  Borland's  unhandsomeness  is  dis- 
comfort." Again  he  speaks  of  him  as  being  a  bearer 
several  times  at  funerals,  where  at  one  he,  with 
others,  received  a  scarf  and  ring  which  "were  given 
at  the  House  after  coming  from  the  Grave."  He 
refers  to  a  peculiarity  of  the  venerable  schoolmaster 
when  he  says :  ' '  Mr.  Wadsworth  appears  at  Lecture 
in  his  Perriwig;  Mr.  Cheever  is  grieved  at  it."  Mr. 
Cheever,  however,  was  not  the  only  one  who  was 
opposed  to  periwigs.  The  apostle  Eliot  preached  and 
prayed   against    them.      Even    Judge    Sewall    himself 


JUDGE   SEWALL 
(As  copied  from  portrait  in  Massachusetts  Historical  Society  Rooms) 


Scboolmaeter  39 

had  a  religious  abhorrence  of  such,  being  frank  and  posi- 
tive in  his  denunciations  to  friends  who  wore  them.  He 
took  special  pains  to  copy  some  reasons  he  saw  against 
♦'  mens  wearing  of  Perewigs  made  of  Womens  hair,  as 
the  custom  now  is,  deduced  from  Scripture  &  Reason." 
In  his  Journal  of  1699  he  refers  to  going  to  lecture 
wearing  his  black  cap,  and  we  see  him  today  in  the 
Massachusetts  Historical  Society  rooms,  painted  by  Smy- 
bert,  in  a  black  skullcap  crowning  his  white  locks. 
But  if  in  his  old  age  Master  Cheever  was  grieved  at 
the  use  of  periwigs,  he  was  doubtless  pleased  with  the 
work  of  his  children ;  for  his  son  Samuel,  besides  being 
one  of  the  ministers  consulted  concerning  the  witchcraft 
trials  in  Salem,  was  one  of  those  who  petitioned  the 
General  Court  in  1 703  in  behalf  of  the  witchcraft  suffer- 
ers. Had  the  father  lived  a  few  years  longer  he  would 
probably  have  been  an  eager  listener  to  the  election 
sermon  this  son  preached  in  the  Old  South  Meeting- 
house, the  first  one  preached  in  that  building.  (Ap- 
pendix IV.) 

Then  the  master  must  have  congratulated  his  grand- 
son, Ames,  the  son  of  Samuel,  upon  his  graduation  from 
Harvard  in  1707.  He  certainly  would  have  given  him 
his  blessing  had  he  lived  to  see  him  become  the  first 
settled  minister  of  Manchester,  Mass.,  where  he  died 
and  was  buried.     (Appendix  V.) 

But  the  old  schoolmaster  could  not  go  on  teaching  for- 
ever. He  had  taught  seventy  years  when  his  last  illness 
came  upon  him.  In  the  following  touching  account  in 
his  Diary,  Judge  Sewall  says  of  his  friend : — 


40  jejcJ^tel  (Tbeever 

^*  Aug:  12,  1708. — Mr.  Chiever  is  abroad  &  hears 
Mr.  Cotton  Mather  preach.  This  is  the  last  of  his 
going  abroad.  Was  taken  very  sick,  like  to  die  with  a 
Flux.  Aug-.  13. — I  go  to  see  him,  went  in  with  his  son 
Thomas  and  Mr.  Lewis.  His  Son  spake  to  him  and  he 
knew  him  not ;  I  spake  to  him  and  he  bid  me  speak 
again;  then  he  said,  Now  I  know  you,  and  speaking 
cheerily  mentioned  my  name.  I  ask'd  his  Blessing  for 
me  and  my  family ;  He  said  I  was  Bless' d,  and  it  could 
not  be  Reversed.  Yet  at  my  going  away  He  pray'd  for 
a  Blessing  for  me. 

''^  Aug-.  19. — I  visited  Mr.  Chiever  again,  just  before 
Lecture ;  Thank' d  him  for  his  kindness  to  me  and  mine  ; 
desired  his  prayers  for  me,  my  family,  Boston,  Salem, 
the  Province.  He  rec'd  me  with  abundance  of 
Affection,  taking  me  by  the  hand  several  times.  He 
said.  The  Afflictions  of  God's  people,  God  by  them  did 
as  a  Goldsmith,  knock,  knock,  knock ;  knock,  knock, 
knock,  to  finish  the  plate ;  It  was  to  perfect  them  not  to 
punish  them.  I  went  and  told  Mr.  Pemberton  (the  Pas- 
tor of  Old  South)  who  preached. 

"  Aug-.  20. — I  visited  Mr.  Chiever  who  was  now 
grown  much  weaker,  and  his  speech  very  low.  He 
call'd  Daughter!  When  his  daughter  Russel  came,  He 
ask'd  if  the  family  were  composed;  They  apprehended 
He  was  uneasy  because  there  had  not  been  Prayer  that 
morn  ;  and  solicited  me  to  Pray  ;  I  was  loth  and  advised 
them  to  send  for  Mr.  Williams,  as  most  natural,  homo- 
geneous ;  They  declin'd  it,  and  I  went  to  Prayer. 
After,  I  told  him.  The  last  enemy  was  Death,  and  God 
hath  made  that  a  friend  too ;  He  put  his  hand  out  of  the 
Bed,  and  held  it  up,  to  signify  his  Assent.  Observing 
he  suck'd  a  piece  of  an  Orange,  put  it  orderly  into  his 
mouth  and  chew'd  it,  and  then  took  out  the  core.  After 
dinner  I  carried  a  few  of  the  best  Figs  I  could  get  and  a 
dish  Marmalet.     I  spake  not  to  him  now. 


Scboolmaeter  41 

"^a^.  21. — Mr.  Edward  Oakes  tells  me  Mr.  Chiever 
died  this  last  night." 

Then  in  a  note  he  tells  the  chief  facts  in  his  life, 
which  he  closes  with  : — 

"  So  that  he  has  Laboured  in  that  calling  (teaching) 
skilfully,  diligently,  constantly,  Religiously,  Seventy 
years.  A  rare  Instance  of  Piety,  Health,  Strength,  Ser- 
viceableness.  The  Wellfare  of  the  Province  was  much 
upon  his  spirit.     He  abominated  Perriwiggs." 

Thus  the  old  schoolmaster  died  in  the  harness,  teach- 
ing up  to  his  last  illness,  when  almost  ninety-four  years 
of  age. 

His  funeral  was  from  the  schoolhouse,  when  —  ac- 
cording to  Judge  Sewall — the  governor,  councilors, 
ministers,  justices  and  gentlemen  were  present.  Mr. 
Nathaniel  Williams,  his  successor  as  master  of  the 
school,  "  made  a  handsome  Latin  oration  in  his  Honor." 
After  naming  the  bearers,  the  judge  adds  that  he  was 
earnestly  solicited  after  the  funeral  "  to  speak  to  a  place 
of  Scripture,  at  the  private  Quarter  Meeting  in  the  room 
of  Mr.  Cheever."  It  seemed  to  be  a  joy  to  him  that 
the  old  schoolmaster  began  and  ended  his  "American 
Race  in  Boston;"  that  his  "holy,  useful  life  was  a 
married  life ;  he  married  and  then  fell  to  keeping 
school."  He  evidently  was  pleased  with  his  earthly 
habitations,  for  in  writing  to  Increase  Mather  of  the 
town  expenses,  he  refers  to  the  "  very  good  school- 
house  and  dwelling-house"  which  had  been  built  for 
him,  adding  "Our  late  excellent  master,  Mr.  Ezekiel 
Cheever,  went  to  his  heavenly  mansion  from  a  very 
pleasant  Earthly  Situation."      {Letter  Book.) 


42  jeseftiel  Cbeever 

At  the  time  of  his  death,  Joseph  Dudley  was  governor 
of  the  colony,  and  Queen  Anne  ruled  in  England. 
During  his  thirty-eight  years'  service  in  Boston,  the  old 
schoolmaster  had  seen  the  administrations  of  Governors 
Bellingham,  Leverett,  Simon  Bradstreet,  Sir  Edmund 
Andros,  and  other  prominent  men.  He  had  been  a 
friend  of  the  Boston  pastors.  But  the  most  stirring 
days  of  America's  struggle  had  not  arrived.  Washing- 
ton, John  Adams,  Jefferson,  Paul  Revere,  John  Han- 
cock and  other  leaders  were  not  born.  Franklin  had 
been  baptized  in  the  Old  South  Meeting  House  only 
two  years  before.  But  enough  had  been  acted  to  arouse 
the  attention  and  interest  of  the  successful  master.  The 
troubles  and  sorrows  of  the  Indians  had  been  revealed  in 
King  Philip's  War  (1675-1676.)  The  fanaticism  and 
horror  of  the  Salem  witchcraft  of  1692  had  shocked 
the  finest  minds,  and  the  career  of  George  Fox  and  the 
Quakers  was  claiming  attention. 

Governor  Hutchinson  in  his  History  of  Massachusetts 
refers  to  his  departed  master  as  ' '  venerable,  not  merely 
for  his  great  age,  ninety-four,  but  for  having  been  the 
schoolmaster  of  most  of  the  principal  gentlemen  in 
Boston  who  were  then  upon  the  stage."  His  young 
Harvard  Latin  salutatorian,  John  Leverett,  was  then 
president  of  the  college  at  a  salary  of  one  hundred  and 
fifty  pounds  a  year.  Another  pupil.  Cotton  Mather, 
who  felt  sure  he  had  "  as  much  Reason  to  appear  for 
Him  as  ever  Crito  for  his  Master  Socrates,"  preached 
his  funeral  sermon.  Printed  in  Boston  in  1708,  and 
later  in  1774,  its  title  page  called  him  the  "Ancient  and 


Scboolmaeter  43 

Honorable  Master  of  the  Free  School  in  Boston,  who 
left  off  but  when  Mortality  took  him  off  in  August,  1 708." 

The  "Historical  Introduction"  to  the  sermon,  in 
giving  the  main  facts  of  his  life,  closed  by  saying  that 
•'  He  had  been  a  Skillful,  Painful,  Faithful  School- 
master for  Seventy  years,  and  had  the  singular  favour 
of  Heaven  that  the'  he  had  Usefully  spent  his  Life 
among  Children,  yet  he  was  not  become  Twice  a  child 
but  held  his  Abilities  with  his  Usefulness,  in  an  unusual 
degree  to  the  very  last." 

In  the  sermon  proper  he  testified  to  the  intellectual 
force  of  his  master,  which  was  "  as  little  abated  as  his 
natural."  He  exemplified  the  fulfillment  of  that  word, 
♦'  As  thy  days  so  shall  thy  strength  be."  Before  clos- 
ing with  a  Latin  epitaph,  he  gave  an  essay  in  rhyme, 
to  the  memory  of  his  "  Venerable  Master,"  which  he 
hoped  might  "  in  any  measure  animate  the  Gratitude  of 
any  Scholars  to  their  Well-deserving  Tutors." 

It  began  as  follows : — 

"  You  that  are  Men,  and  Thoughts  of  Manhood  know, 

Be  just  now  to  the  Man  that  made  you  so. 

Martyred  by  Scholars,  the  stabbed  Cassian  dies, 

And  falls  to  cursed  Lads  a  sacrifice. 

Not  so  my  Cheever,  not  by  scholars  slain, 

But  Praised  and  Loved  and  Wished  to  Life  again. 

A  Mighty  Tribe  of  Well-instructed  Youth 

Tell  what  they  owe  to  him,  and  Tell  the  Truth  ; 

All  the  Eight  parts  of  Speech  he  taught  to  them 

They  now  Employ  to  Trumpet  his  Esteem. 


With  interjections  they  break  off  at  last. 
But  Ah,  is  all  they  use,  Wo,  and  Alas  I" 


44  jeseFilel  Cbcever 

In  over  200  lines  the  memorial  rhyme  goes  on. 

"  Do  but  name  Cheever  and  the  Echo,  straight 
Upon  that  name,  Good  Latin  will  Repeat. 


And  in  our  School  a  Miracle  is  wrought. 
For  the  Dead  Languages  to  Life  are  brought. 

How  oft  we  saw  him  tread  the  Milky  Way 
Which  to  the  glorious  Throne  of  Mercy  lay ! 
Come  from  the  Mount  he  shone  with  ancient  Grace, 
Awful  the  splendor  of  his  Aged  Face. 


His  Work  he  loved ;  Oh  had  we  done  the  same ! 
Our  Play-Dayes  still  to  him  ungrateful  came ; 
And  yet  so  well  our  Work  adjusted  Lay, 
We  came  to  Work  as  if  we  came  to  Play. 


'Tis  Corlet's  pains  &  Cheever's  we  must  own. 
That  thou,  New  England,  art  not  Scythia  grown. 
You  that  in  t'other  Hemisphere  do  dwell 
Do  of  Old  Age  your  dismal  stories  tell. 


To  weak  Old  Age  you  say  there  must  belong 

A  trembling  Palsey  both  of  Limb  and  Tongue. 

Dayes  all  decrepit ;  and  a  Bending  Back, 

Propt  by  a  Staff,  in  Hands  that  ever  shake. 

Nay,  Syrs,  our  Cheever  shall  confute  you  all, 

On  Whom  there  did  none  of  these  Mischiefs  fall. 

He  lived  and  to  vast  Age  no  Illness  knew. 

Till  Time's  Scythe  waiting  for  him  Rusty  grew. 

He  Lived  and  Wrought ;  His  Labours  were  Immense, 

But  ne'er  Declined  to  Praeter  perfect  Tense. 


Death  gently  cut  the  stalk  and  kindly  laid 
Him,  where  our  God  his  Granary  has  made." 
(Appendix  VL) 


Scboolmaeter  45 

"  The  muse  was  never  more  modish  and  self-con- 
scious," declared  Phillips  Brooks  in  referring  to  this 
essay  in  rhyme;  "poetry  never  labored  under  such 
mountain-weight  of  pedantry ;  conceits  never  so  turned 
and  returned  and  doubled  on  themselves ;  the  flowers 
of  rhetoric  never  so  ran  to  seed,  as  in  these  marvelous 
verses  in  which  this  minister  of  the  North  Church  did 
obituary  honor  to  the  Master  of  the  Latin  School." 
"  And  yet  it  shows,"  he  concluded,  "  that  the  reality  of 
his  pupil's  tribute  to  his  greatness  pierced  through  all 
his  absurd  exaggerations,  and  made  him  walk  grandly 
even  in  these  preposterous  clothes." 

The  delivery  of  this  essay  in  rhyme  evidently  brought 
to  mind  other  elegies  which  had  been  written  in  honor 
of  the  faithful ;  for  there  was  published  upon  the  death 
of  Master  Cheever  one  which  his  immediate  predecessor 
as  master  of  the  school,  Benjamin  Tompson  *  had  writ- 


*  Benjamin  Tompson,  schoolmaster,  physician  and  poet,  the 
son  of  Rev.  William  Tompson  of  Braintree,  was  born  July  14, 
1642  ;  graduated  at  Harvard  College,  1662.  In  the  Eustis  Street 
burying-ground  in  Roxbury,  where  he  lies  buried,  is  the  follow- 
ing inscription  to  his  memory  :  — 

SUB   SPE   IMMORTALI  YE 

HERSE   OF   M'   BENJ   THOMPSON   y* 

LEARNED    SCHOOLMASTER 

e 

&   PHYSICIAN   &   Y 

RENOUNED    POET    OF   N  :    ENGL  : 

OBIIT    APRILIS    13   ANNO   DOM 

1714   &    ^TATIS    SU^,    72. 

MORTUUS,    SED    IMMORTALIS 

HE   THAT    WOULD   TRY 

WHAT   IS   TRUE   HAPPINESS    INDEED 

MUST  DIE 


46  jQ-scf^icl  Cbeever 

ten  upon  the  death  of  another  schoolmaster,  John  Wood- 
mancy.  Dr.  Samuel  A.  Green,  of  the  Massachusetts 
Historical  Society,  in  his  contribution  of  the  elegy  to 
the  Proceedings  of  the  Society  (Second  Series,  Volume 
v.),  thinks  that  without  doubt  Mr.  Woodmancy  was  a 
master  in  the  Latin  School,  though  he  had  been  unable 
to  connect  him  either  with  Robert  Woodmansey,  head 
master  of  the  school,  who  died  in  1667,  or  with  John 
Woodmancy,  merchant,  who  died  in  1684.  At  least 
the  subject  of  this  elegy  was  a  schoolmaster  in  Boston, 
as  told  by  the  title:  "The  Grammarian's  Funeral,  an 
Elegy  composed  upon  the  Death  of  Mr.  John  Wood- 
mancy, formerly  a  schoolmaster  in  Boston ;  But  now 
Published  upon  the  Death  of  the  Venerable  Mr.  Ezekiel 
Chevers  the  late  and  famous  schoolmaster  of  Boston  in 
New  England ;  who  Departed  this  Life  the  twenty-first 
of  August  1708,  Early  in  the  Morning,  In  the  ninety- 
fourth  year  of  his  age."  That  Mr.  Woodmancy  taught 
Latin  is  evident  from  the  tenor  of  the  lines  themselves. 
How  could  otherwise  such  a  personification  of  Latin 
speech  have  come  into  being? 

"  Eight  Parts  of  Speech  this  day  wear  Mourning  Gowns, 

Declined  Verbs,  Pronouns,  Participles,  Nouns. 

And  not  declined,  Adverbs  and  Conjunctions 

In  Lillies  Torch  they  stand  to  do  their  functions 

With  Preposition  ;  but  the  most  affection 

Was  still  observed  in  the  Interjection. 

The  Substantive  seeming  the  limbed  best 

Would  set  an  hand  to  bear  him  to  his  Rest. 

The  Adjective  with  very  grief  did  say, 

Hold  me  by  strength,  or  I  shall  faint  away. 


Scboolmaetcr  47 

The  Ponds  of  Tears  did  over-cast  their  faces, 
Yea,  all  were  in  most  lamentable  Cases. 
The  five  Declensions  did  the  Work  decline, 
And  Told  the  Pronoun  Tu,  The  work  is  thine ; 
But  in  this  case  those  have  no  call  to  go 
That  want  the  Vocative  and  can't  say  O  ! 
The  Pronouns  said  that  if  the  Nouns  were  there, 
There  was  no  need  of  them,  thej  might  them  spare. 
But  for  the  sake  of  Emphasis  they  would 
In  their  Discretion  do  what  ere  they  could. 
Great  honor  was  conferred  on  Conjugations, 
They  were  to  follow  next  to  the  Relations. 
Amo  did  love  him  best,  and  Doceo  might 
Alledge  he  was  his  Glory  and  Delight, 
But  Lego  said  by  me  he  got  his  skill, 
And  therefore  next  the  Herse  I  follow  will. 
Audio  said  little,  hearing  them  so  hot. 
Yet  knew  by  him  much  learning  he  had  got. 
O  Verbs  the  Active  were.  Or  Passive  sure, 
Sum  to  be  Neuter  could  not  well  endure. 
But  this  was  common  to  them  all  to  moan 
Their  load  of  grief  they  could  not  soon  Depone. 
A  doleful  day  for  Verbs,  they  look  so  moody. 
They  drove  Spectators  to  a  mournful  study. 
The  Verbs  irregular,  'twas  thought  by  some. 
Would  break  no  rule,  if  they  were  pleased  to  come. 
Gaudeo  could  not  be  found  ;  fearing  disgrace 
He  had  with-drawn,  sent  Mceceo  in  his  Place. 
Possum  did  to  the  utmost  he  was  able. 
And  bore  as  Stout  as  if  he'd  been  A  Table. 
Volo  was  willing,  Nolo  somewhat  stout, 
But  Malo  rather  chose  not  to  stand  out. 
Possum  and  Volo  wished  all  might  afford 
Their  help,  but  had  not  an  Imperative  Word. 
Edo  from  service  would  by  no  means  swerve ; 
Rather  than  fail,  he  thought  the  Cakes  to  Serve. 


48  lescfttel  Cbeever 

Fio  was  taken  in  a  fit  and  said 
By  him  a  mournful  POEM  should  be  made. 
Fero  was  willing  for  to  bear  a  part, 
Altho'  he  did  it  with  an  aking  heart. 
Feror  excused,  with  grief  he  was  so  Torn, 
He  could  not  bear,  he  needed  to  be  born. 
Such  Nouns  and  Verbs  as  we  defective  find. 
No  Grammar  Rule  did  their  attendance  bind. 
They  were  excepted,  and  exempted  hence, 
But  Supines,  all  did  blame  for  negligence. 
Verbs^  Offspring,  Participles,  hand-in-hand. 
Follow,  and  by  the  same  direction  stand  ; 
The  rest  Promiscuously  did  croud  and  cumber 
Such  multitudes  of  each,  they  wanted  Number. 
Next  to  the  Corps  to  make  the  attendance  even. 
Jove,  Mercury,  Apollo  came  from  heaven, 
And  Virgil,  Cato,  gods,  men.  Rivers,  Winds 
With  Elegies,  Tears,  Sighs,  came  in  their  kinds. 
Ovidirom  Pontus  hast's  apparelled  thus 
In  Exile-weeds  bringing  De  Tristibus  : 
And  Homer  sure  had  been  among  the  Rout, 
But  that  the  Stories  say  his  Eyes  were  out. 
Queens,  Cities,  Countries,  Islands,  Come, 
All  Trees,  Birds,  Fishes  and  each  Word  in  Um. 
What  Syntax  here  can  you  expect  to  find, 
Where  each  one  bears  such  discomposed  mind  ? 
Figures  of  Diction  and  Construction 
Do  little;  Yet  stand  sadly  looking  on. 
That  such  a  Train  may  in  their  notion  chord 
Prosodia  gives  the  measure  Word  for  Word. 
Sic  Mcestus  Cecinit. 

Benj.  Tompson." 

It  is  possible  that  Mr.  Tompson  wrote  these  lines 
while  little  Cotton  Mather  was  his  pupil  in  the  Latin 
School;   for  we  are  told   by  his  biographer-son  that 


Scboolmaater  49 

before  he  was  "  under  the  famous  Mr.  Ezekiel  Cheever," 
whom  he  calls  a  "  very  learned,  pious  man,  and  an  ex- 
cellent schoolmaster,"  he  had  been,  "first,  under  the 
care  of  Mr.  Benjamin  Tompson,  who,"  he  says,  "was 
a  man  of  great  learning  and  Wit,  well  acquainted  with 
Roman  and  Greek  writers,  and  a  good  poet." 

The  reference  in  the  Essay  in  Rhyme  to  Master  Chee- 
ver* s  being  "kindly  laid  where  our  God  his  Granary 
has  laid"  seems  to  be  confirmed  by  a  small  stone, 
marked  "Mr.  Ezekiel  Cheuer,"  seen  today  in  the  Old 
Granary  burying-ground,  Boston,  near  the  stone  of  his 
daughter,  Susanna  Russell.* 

His  will,  written  in  1705,  a  short  time  before  his  wife 
whom  he  mentions,  died,  as  seen  today  in  the  Suffolk 
Probate  Office,  Boston,  was  offered  by  this  daughter  Su- 
sanna and  the  son  Thomas,  a  few  days  after  his  death. 
In  his  clear  handwriting  it  reads : — 

"  The  Last  will  and  Testament  of  Ezekiel  Cheever: 
In  Nomine  Domini  Amen.  I  Ezekiel  Cheever  of 
the  towne  of  Boston  in  the  County  of  Suffolk  in  New 
England,  Schoolmaster,  being  through  great  mercy  in 
good  health  &  understanding  wonderful!  in  my  age,  do 
make  &  ordain  this  my  last  will  &  Testament :  as  fol- 
loweth.  First.  I  give  up  my  Soule  to  God  my  Father 
in  Jesus  Christ,  my  body  to  the  earth  to  be  buried  in 
a  decent  manner  according  to  my  desire  in  hope  of  a 
blessed  part  in  the  first  resurrection  &  glorious  kingdom 


*  In  a  most  extensive  research,  I  find  no  proof  whatever 
for  the  statement  that  has  been  publicly  made  that  he  v^as  buried 
in  the  Roxbury  burying-ground,  or  that  afterwrards  he  was 
removed  from  there  to  the  Cheever  tomb  in  Phipps  place  on 
Burial  Hill,  Charlestown. 


50  leseftiel  Cbeevcr 

of  Christ  on  earth  a  thousand  years.  As  for  my  out- 
ward Estate  I  thus  dispose  of  it.  First,  I  give  to  my  dear 
wife  all  my  household  goods  &  of  my  plate  the  two-ear' d 
cup,  my  least  tankard,  porringer,  a  spoon.  It :  I  give 
my  son  Thomas  all  my  books  saving  what  Ezekiel  may 
need  &  what  godly  books  my  wife  may  desire.  It :  I 
give  to  Mary  Philips  ten  pounds.  It :  I  give  to  my 
grandchild  Ezekiel  Russell  twenty  pounds.  Item :  I 
divide  all  the  rest  of  my  estate  into  three  Parts  ;  one  third 
I  give  to  my  dear  wife  Ellen  Cheever,  the  other  two 
thirds  to  my  other  children,  Samuel,  Mary,  Elizabeth, 
Ezekiel,  Thomas,  Susanna,  equally  part  just  alike  the 
Legacies,  debts,  &  funeral  expenses  deducted  &  dis- 
charged. Marie's  portion  I  give  to  her  children  as  she 
shall  dispose.  The  Land  Elizabeth  purchased  with  my 
money  I  give  to  her  and  to  her  children  forever.  If  my 
wife  dies  before  me,  all  given  her  shall  be  given  to 
my  six  children  equally.  If  any  of  my  children  die, 
their  portion  I  give  to  their  children  equally.  It :  I  give 
to  the  poor  five  pounds  as  part  of  my  funeral  charges. 
It :  I  make  and  appoint  my  dear  wife,  Ellen  Cheever, 
&  my  two  children  Thomas  and  Susanna  joint  executors 
of  this  my  last  will.  In  witness  whereof,  I  have  here- 
unto set  my  hand  and  Seal  this  Sixteenth  Day  of  Febr. 
1705-6.  Signed,  sealed,  declared  in  presence  of  Eze- 
kiel Cheever. 

Benjamin  Dyer, 
Henry  Bridgham, 


Henry  Bridgham. 


HERB. 


The  estate,  appraised  at  ^£837,  19s.  6d.,  consisted  of 
Purse  &  apparel  (£46)  Household  Goods  (£165, 
13s.  8d.),  Plate  (nearly  £35),  Cash  (£245,  9s.  8d.), 
Peasable  Bonds  (over  £400),  Debts  received  (nearly 


Scboolma0ter  51 

The  words  of  Cotton  Mather  in  his  memorable  sermon 
concerning  schoolmasters  and  the  "Blessed  Cheever," 
are  as  true  today  as  when  they  were  uttered.  "'Tis 
a  justice  to  them,"  he  said,  "  that  they  should  be  had  in 
everlasting  Remembrance :  and  a  Place  and  a  Name 
among  these  Just  ?nen  does  particularly  belong  to  that 
Ancient  and  Honorable  Man^  a  Master  in  our 
Israel.'^  He  felt  that  having  under  him  "  Learnt  an 
Oration  made  by  Tully  in  praise  of  his  own  master, 
namely,  that  Pro  Archia  Poeta^^^  they  should  not  be 
outdone  by  a  "  Pagan  in  our  gratitude  to  our  master." 
"Neither  as  an  example  should  the  famous  Christian  in 
the  Primitive  Times,  who  wrote  a  whole  Book  in  praise 
of  his  Master  Hierotheus"  be  forgotten.  Indeed  he 
wished  more — even  a  statue  to  his  Master.  "  Verrius, 
the  Master  to  the  Nephews  of  Augustus ^'^  he  was  proud 
to  say,  "  had  a  Statue  Erected  for  him ;  and  Antoninus 
obtained  from  the  Senate  a  Statue  for  his  Master  Pronto. 
I  am  sorry  that  Mine  has  none."  But  he  comforted 
himself  with  the  thought  that  "  Cato  counted  it  more 
glorious  than  any  Statue  to  have  it  asked,  Why  has  he 
none?"  He  felt  that  in  the  "  grateful  Memories  of  his 
Scholars"  there  had  been,  and  would  be,  "  Hundreds 
erected  for  him."  And  as  with  the  old  Romans,  so 
with  the  new  Americans ;  grateful  memories  of  Boston 
Latin  School  scholars  for  Master  Cheever  have  come 
down  the  years.  Nearly  one  hundred  and  eighty  years 
after  his  death,  his  faithful  service  was  recalled  by  them 
on  the  occasion  of  the  two  hundred  and  fiftieth  anniver- 
sary of  the  Latin  School,  when  Dr.  Edward  Everett  Hale 


52  jejcFitel  Cbeever 

presided,  and  its  historian,  the  Rev.  Henry  F.  Jenks, 
John  T.  Hassam,  Henry  W.  Haynes,  Grenville  H.  Nor- 
cross  and  others  were  moving  spirits.  Robert  Grant,  as 
poet  of  the  occasion,  offered  the  following  tribute : — 

"  Ezekiel  Cheever  !  would  that  we  knew  more 
Of  him  who  lived  to  teach  at  ninety-four 
Beside  a  senile  but  historic  knee 
The  fathers  of  the  men  who  made  us  free. 
Perpetuated  by  a  Mather's  pen 
His  pious  learning  prompts  his  countrymen 
To  cast  a  backward  glance  on  history's  page, 
And  reverence  the  Nestor  of  his  age. 
Within  the  sacred  shade  the  chapel  flings, 
Called  '  Stone  '  by  patriots,  and  by  Tories  '  King's,* 
He  reared  his  scholars  on  the  deeds  of  Rome 
To  emulate  antiquity  at  home. 
And  drew  for  salary,  as  the  Records  say, 
The  rental  of  Deer  Island  down  the  Bay. 
When  Death  had  taken  Cheever  to  himself, 
Nathaniel  Williams  had  his  place  and  pelf." 

But  this  was  not  enough.  The  orator  of  the  occasion, 
Phillips  Brooks,  desired  more,  even  a  visible  remem- 
brance ;  he  could  not  but  remember  what  Cotton  Mather 
had  said, — that  when  scholars  saw  what  Quirimis  put  on 
his  Monument  for  his  Master,  "  Invisunt  Locum  Stud- 
iosi  Juvenes  frequenter^  ut  hoc  Exemplo  Mdoctty 
quantum,  Discipuli  ipsi  pr<sceptortbus  suis  debeant, 
perpetuo  meminisse  velint,'^  they  learnt  from  the 
sight  what  "  acknowledgments  were  due  from  Scholars 
to  their  Masters."  So  he  dared  hope  that  the  time 
would  come  when  "some  poetic  brain  would  figure  to 
itself,  and  some  hands  alert  with  historical  imagination — 


Scboolmaeter  53 

perhaps  the  same  which  had  bidden  John  Harvard  live 
in  immortal  youth  in  Cambridge — would  shape  out  of 
vital  bronie  what  sort  of  man  the  first  great  school- 
master Ezekiel  Cheever  was."  He  felt  it  would  be 
well  worth  doing,  and  not  be  hard  for  genius  to  do — for 
"  whoever  knows  the  seventeenth  century,  will  see 
start  into  life  its  typical  man,  the  man  of  prayer,  the 
man  of  faith,  the  man  of  duty,  the  man  of  God."  He 
might  well  have  added  the  inscription  appropriate  for 
such  which  Mather  told  of  being  on  the  monument 
Aristotle  set  up  for  his  Master  Plato — "He  was  one 
whom  all  good  men  ought  to  imitate  as  well  as  to 
celebrate." 

The  days  went  by.  No  genius  took  up  the  work. 
But  in  1899,  nearly  two  hundred  years  after  Master 
Cheever  ceased  his  labors  on  earth,  the  Boston  Latin 
School  Association,  of  the  same  school  he  honored  with 
his  service,  placed  in  its  building  on  Warren  Avenue 
through  the  generosity  of  Mr.  Grenville  H.  Norcross,  a 
tablet  inscribed  as  follows  : — 

Ezekiel   Cheever 
hvivs  scholae  praeceptor 

PER   ANNOS    PROPE   OCTO   ET   TRIGINTA 

LONDINII   NATVS    A.  D.  MDCXIV    VIII   KAL    FEB. 

IBI  EDVCATVS   IN    SCHOLA    CHRISTS    HOSPITAL   DICTA 

IN   NVMERVM   CIVIVM    ACADEMICORVM    COLLEGII 

EMMANVEL    IN   VNIVERSITATE    CANTABRIGIENSI 

ASCITVS   A.  D.    MDCXXXII    PRIDIE    ID   IAN 

HANG   PETIIT    TERRAM    A.   D.    MDCLXXVIII   ID    IAN 

PRAEPOSITVS   HVIC    SCHOLAE   A.  D.   MDCXXXVII 

OBIT   A.  D.    MDCCVIII    XII   KAL    SEPT. 

VIXIT    PIE    ANNIS    LXXXXIV 

COTTON   MATHER    DISCIPVLVS    GRATVS    HVIC 

OMNBM   NOVAE  ANGLL/VB  ERVDITIONEM  ASCRIPSIT. 


54  fiscFilel  Cbecver 

And  today  it  is  gratifying  to  see  in  the  city  of  New 
Haven,  where  Master  Cheever  not  only  began  his  voca- 
tion as  teacher  but  which  he  helped  to  found,  a  large 
brick  schoolhouse  on  the  corner  of  Lombard  and  Fil- 
more  Streets,  bearing  on  its  front  since  its  opening  in 
1897,  the  honored  name,  Ezekiel  Cheever. 


Hppenbix 


HppenMi 
I. 

Latin  letters  of  Ezekiel  Cheever  to  his  son,  the  Rev. 
Samuel  Cheever,  of  Marblehead  : — 

BosTONij  Nov.  24''  hora  io»  vesp. 
Chare  fih  :  Accepi  ab  hospite  epistolium  tuum  24^  Nov. 
post  festum,  ex  quo  priores  firas  te  salut&sse  literas,  interci- 
dentibus  nullis,  cognosco,  Optatum  iter  hor&  institute  perfeci. 
Cant,  ad  patrem  profectus  sum.  Quern  verb  k  fronte  quaerebam, 
a  tergo  Bostonij  inscius  reliqui.  Ne  tamen  iter  ex  toto  infelix 
et  invitum  esset,  visum  est  negotium  cum  matre  comunicare ; 
quam  etiam  si  rem  totam  celassem,  subverebar  ne  ipsam  aliena 
et  minus  amicam  haberem.  Ex  colloquio  intellexi  duos  prius 
tibi  significatos  virginem  petijsse,  quoru  neutr.  vel  addicta,  vel 
facilis  ee  videtur.  Ista  objecit  in  illis,  uno  saltern,  quae  in  te 
non  competunt.  Mater  nihil  impedimenti  praestruxit,  sed  via 
apertam,  et  aditum  liberum  ut  sperem,  induxit.  Totum  tamen 
negotium  marito  et  filiae  comittendum  censuit.  Valedicens 
tandem  domum  redeo.  In  reditu  ecce,  obviam  venit  quem 
quaerebam,  ffelix  interpretabar  auspicium  occursum  ejus.  Virum 
aggressus  sum,  comiter  salutavi,  paucis  itineris  causam  dixi,  et 
quicquid  in  rem  visum  est,  de  fortunis  tuis  narro,  interna  ali- 
orum  judicio  et  testimonio  mandans.  Amice  me  tractavit  vir 
prudens  vultu  et  voce.  Ne  verbum  quidem  alienum  et  adversum. 
Sed  totum  consilium  ad  filiae  sententiam  referebat.  Hoc  tamen 
mihi  exoranti  concessit,  ut  ipse  Bost.  revertens  (quod  fore  sub 
mediam  septimanam  credebat)  me  domi  meae  conveniret,  et  de 
toto  negotio  certiorem  faceret.  Ex  quo  ipsum  non  vidi,  nee 
quicqua  audiva  ;  sed  in  horas  singulas  expecto.  Quid  quaeris  ? 
Si  me  audis,  quae  apparent  invitare  videntur  omnia.  Successus 
est  penes  Deum.      Prudens  futuri  temporis  exitum  caliginosa 


58  HppenMx 

nocte  premit  deus.     Qui  jubet,  et  melius,  quam  tu  tibi,  consulat, 
opto.     Si  quid  interea  clarius  eluxerit,  modo  nuncius  contingat, 
tibi  praemittam.     Haec  caenatus  et  dormitans  scripsi.     Vale. 
Nos  adventu  tuu  maturum  et  jucundu  expectamus. 

Tui  studiosissi :  pater 
Ez  :  Cheever. 

This  other  letter,  dated  Charlestown,  Dec.  31st,  1669, 
was  found  after  the  death  of  the  Rev.  John  Eliot,  D.D., 
of  Boston  (to  whom  it  was  given  by  a  descendant  of  the 
schoolmaster,  the  Rev.  Isaac  Mansfield  of  Marblehead) , 
and,  later,  presented  to  the  Massachusetts  Historical 
Society ; — 

DuLCE  Caput  :  Redditae  mihi  sunt  pridie  quae  ad  me  dedisti 
hospiti  literae,  ex  quibus  judicium  et  consilium  tuum  facilfe 
perspexi,  nee  contemnendum  esse  puto.  Hiberna  itinera  sunt 
semper  injucunda,  plerum  autem  gravia,  et  molesta,  viatori 
praecipufe  moUi  et  inexperto.  In  magnis  negotijs  salubris  est 
cautela,  mora  tamen  periculosa,  saepe  lethalis.  Cavendum  est, 
ne  praeda,  quam  secteris,  in  alienos  incidat  casses.  Num  virgo 
sic  procorum  expers,  et  nulli  obnoxia,  me  quidem  praeterit. 
Nee  res  est  tuli  indagini  matura.  Hoc  unicum  accepi.  Multi 
illam  petifire,  ilia  aversata  petentes.  Causam  vero  repudij 
prorsus  ignoro.  Prior  morum  et  virtutis  fama  novis  ornatur 
testimonijs,  et  receptae  fidei  authoribus.  Laudum  tamen  splen- 
dor h&c  nubecula  obumbratur,  ipsa  scilicet,  (asserente  quadam 
vicina)  parca  nimis  et  tenax  esse  videtur.  Quod  vitium  fallit 
specie  virtutis  et  umbra.  D»  Hamond  inter  sermones  de  te,  et 
tuo  conjugio  ortos,  quos  cum  hospite  vestra  apud  se  pernoctante 
habuit,  exconjecturS.  temerfe  affirmavit,  te  domi,  non  foras  spon- 
sam  reperturum.  Quod  dictum  vestra  silentio  excepit.  Nihil 
praeter  auditum  habeo,  sed  ipse  vir,  audiente  uxore,  banc  fabulam 
recitavit.     Divino,  consilio  te  totum  trade,  et  coelestis  provi- 


appenMx  59 

dentiae  vestigijs  inhaere,  et  ad  optatum  exitum  pervenies.  Nihil 
aliud,  quod  scribam,  occurrit.  Tui  omnes  valent,  et  te  ex 
animo  salutant.     Plura  coram,  et  otiosus.     Vale. 

Dat :  Dec  :  ultimo.  69. 

Carolotonia.  Tui  amantissimus  Pater 

Ez  :  Cheever. 

Hospiti  tuae  me  omnino  excusatu  habe,  quod  ilia  in  equo 
transeuntem,  et  me  comiter  appellante,  in  aedes  ne  quidem  in- 
vitavi,  putavi  n.  ipsa  Bost ;  euntem  ne  descensura,  instante 
nocte,  et  reverb  uxore  condelis  condendis  occupata,  nee  ipsa  erat 
visu  facilis,  nee  domus  hospitio  idonea. 

These 
For  his  dear  son  Samuel 
Cheever 

at     Marblehead. 
II. 

Dr.  TldiUiam  Hmes 

Dr.  William  Ames  (1576-1633),  or  Amesius,  as  the  Dutch  call 
him,  was  for  years  a  valued  professor  in  the  Franeker  University 
in  Friesland,  which,  dating  from  1585,  and  closed  by  Napoleon 
in  181 1,  was  noted  for  its  enthusiastic  recognition  of  the  Ameri- 
cans in  their  struggle  for  liberty.  The  theological  writings  of 
this  Cambridge  graduate  in  various  editions  are  still  read  in  the 
Netherlands.  Cotton  Mather,  in  his  Magnalia,  refers  to  his 
controversies  with  John  Robinson,  when,  in  his  "younger  time," 
he  published  treatises,  and  made  no  scruple  to  call  the  incom- 
parable Dr.  Ames  himself  Dr.  Amiss  for  opposing  such  a  degree 
of  separation  as  he  then  advocated.  Being  later  convinced,  how- 
ever, by  this  '*  learned  antagonist,"  he  came  to  retract  what  his 
mistaken  zeal  had  advocated.  Mather  also  refers  to  Dr.  Ames' 
friendship  with  Thomas  Hooker,  a  founder  of  the  Hartford 
Colony,  and  tells  that  when  Mr.  Hooker  was  called  to  Rotter- 
dam, he  the  "more  heartily  and  readily  accepted,"  because  it 


6o  HppenMx 

renewed  his  acquaintance  with  his  invaluable  Dr.  Ames,  who 
had  newly  left  his  place  in  the  Frisian  University.  With  him 
he  spent  the  residue  of  his  time  in  Holland,  and  assisted  him  in 
composing  some  of  his  discourses,  which  are,  "  His  Fresh  Suit 
Against  the  Ceremonies" ;  for  such  was  the  regard  which  Dr. 
Ames  had  for  him,  that,  notwithstanding  his  vast  ability  and 
experience,  yet  when  it  came  to  the  "  narrow  of  any  question 
about  the  instituted  worship  of  God,"  he  would  still  profess  him- 
self conquered  by  Mr.  Hooker's  reason,  declaring  that  though 
he  had  been  acquainted  with  many  scholars  of  divers  nations, 
yet  he  never  met  with  Mr.  Hooker's  equal,  either  for  preaching 
or  for  disputing.  And  such  was  the  regard  which  on  the  other 
side  he  had  for  Dr.  Ames,  that  he  would  say,  "  If  a  scholar  was 
but  well  studied  in  Dr.  Ames,  his  Medulla  Theologiae  and  Casus 
Conscientias,  so  as  to  understand  them  thoroughly,  they  would 
make  him  (supposing  him  versed  in  the  scriptures)  a  good 
divine,  though  he  had  no  more  books  in  the  world."  After  this 
Mr.  Hooker  went  to  Boston.  Dr.  Ames  had  a  design  to  follow, 
but  death  prevented;  or,  as  Cotton  Mather  says,  he  was  "on. 
the  wing  for  this  American  desert,  but  God  then  took  him  to 
the  heavenly  Canaan."  But  his  widow  and  three  children — 
William,  John  and  Ruth — came  to  New  England,  where,  "having 
her  house  burnt,  and  being  reduced  into  much  poverty  and  afflic- 
tion, the  charitable  heart  of  Mr.  Hooker,  and  others  who  joined 
with  him,  upon  advice  thereof,  comfortably  provided  for  them." 
(Book  III,  Magnalia.)  The  General  Court  of  Massachusetts 
gave  forty  pounds  to  her, — "  the  widow  of  Dr.  Ames  of  famous 
memory."  She  had  also  a  grant  of  land  that  year  (1637)  in 
Salem,  where  she  lived  ere  moving  to  Cambridge.  Motley  tells 
us  that  the  family  library  was  used  in  the  education  of  American 
youth.  This  recognition  of  the  widow  of  a  man  who  never 
stepped  on  American  soil  argues  to  the  feeling  felt  for  him. 
Cotton  Mather  calls  him  the  "  Phoenix  of  his  age."  He  recalls 
the  farewell  words  to  him  of  Mr.  Paul  Bayne  when  he  was  about 
leaving  his  native  England  for  Holland.  Perceiving  him  to  be 
a  man  of  extraordinary  parts,  he  said:   "Beware  of  a  strong 


HppenMx  6i 

head  and  a  cold  heart.  It  is  rare  for  a  scholastical  wit  to  be 
joined  with  an  heart  warm  in  religion."  He  was  forced  to 
declare,  however,  that  this  was  not  the  case  with  him. 


III. 

3Bo6ton  Xatin  Scbool 

(From  Education  of  June,  1903.) 
EDWARD   EVERETT   HALE,  D.D.,  BOSTON,  MASS. 

The  graduates  of  this  School,  if  they  know  anything  about  it, 
are  in  the  habit  of  saying  that  their  School  is  the  oldest  School 
in  the  United  States.  By  this  they  mean  that  no  other  School 
organization  now  existing  in  America  can  trace  its  existence, 
from  year  to  year,  back  to  a  period  so  early  as  the  13th  day  of 
February,  1635,  when  at  a  meeting  of  the  more  intelligent  people 
in  Boston,  this  School  was  established.  Philemon  Pormort  or 
Portmort,  Pormont,  Portmont,  Permont,  Purmount,  was  ap- 
pointed as  Master.  The  official  spelling,  as  the  School  Cata- 
logue shows  it,  is  Pormort.  He  seems  himself  to  have  spelled 
the  name  in  various  ways.  He  was  one  of  the  conscientious  men 
whom  we  rejected  in  the  ecclesiastical  fury  which  was  aroused 
by  the  preaching  of  Anne  Hutchinson  and  other  intelligent  and 
unintelligent  assistants  of  hers.  In  the  frenzy  which  led  to  this 
banishment  of  some  of  the  best  citizens  of  Boston,  Pormort 
shared  the  fate  of  many  excellent  men. 

I  am  at  the  present  time,  1903,  President  of  the  Boston  Latin 
School  Association,  which  is  made  up  from  the  graduates  of  the 
School.  I  received  a  letter  not  long  since  from  a  gentleman  in- 
terested in  the  oldest  school  in  Albany.  He  challenged  our 
right  to  say  that  we  were  the  oldest  school  in  America,  and  cited 
the  authorities  which  show  that  the  founders  of  Albany  had 
established  a  school  before  1635.  To  which  I  replied  that  I  did 
not  doubt  this  ;  that  there  were  undoubtedly  schools  in  Virginia 
or  in  Plymouth  before  1635 ;  that  I  supposed  there  were  schools 


62  HppenMx 

in  St.  Augustine  and  Santa  F^  long  before  that.  But  I  said  that 
neither  at  Albany,  in  Virginia,  in  Florida,  or  in  New  Mexico  had 
any  one  shown  the  existence  of  a  school  in  those  early  periods 
which  has  been  continually  carried  on  from  those  times  to  this 
time. 

Much  closer  to  us  is  the  Town  of  Dorchester,  which  is  now  a 
part  of  the  municipality  of  Boston.  The  people  of  Dorchester 
in  the  year  1639,  passed  a  vote  taxing  the  owners  of  Thompson's 
Island — which  was  part  of  their  territory — "for  the  maintenance 
of  a  School  in  Dorchester."  The  antiquarians  of  that  town  say 
that  this  is  the  earliest  record  of  public  taxation  for  education. 
Our  Pormort  money  was  raised  by  subscription  and  not  by  taxa- 
tion. All  the  same  our  School  seems  to  have  been  managed  by 
the  town  meeting  from  the  beginning. 

It  is  evident  from  the  Dorchester  and  from  the  Boston  records 
that  the  hope  and  wish  of  the  leaders  was,  that  certain  special 
properties,  like  Deer  Island  and  Thompson's  Island,  should  be 
set  apart  as  the  "  foundation  "  of  these  schools.  But  this  system, 
borrowed  from  the  old  country,  soon  gave  way,  and  all  the 
schools  were  supported  by  taxation.  As  late  as  1652,  Rev.  John 
Cotton  of  the  First  Church  left  half  of  his  estate  to  the  support 
of  a  Free  School  in  Boston,  under  conditions  named  by  him. 

What  we  of  the  Boston  Latin  School  say  to  our  Dorchester 
friends  is  that  they  have  not  in  Dorchester  any  list  of  the  Mas- 
ters of  their  school  from  that  day  to  this  day,  such  as  we  have, 
and  they  cannot  name  to  us  any  one  of  the  Dorchester  public 
Schools  which,  as  our  Episcopal  friends  would  say,  can  show  an 
unbroken  Pedagogical  Succession. 

The  name  of  Philemon  Pormort  does  not  appear  in  the  cata- 
logue of  either  Oxford  or  the  English  Cambridge.  His  immedi- 
ate successor  in  the  School  was  Daniel  Maude,  who  was  a  Master 
of  Arts  of  Emanuel  in  Cambridge ;  and  after  him  in  rapid  suc- 
cession came  John  Woodbridge,  who  was  of  Oxford,  Robert 
Woodmansey,  Benjamin  Tompson,  a  poet  of  his  day,  a  Harvard 
graduate  of  1662,  Ezekiel  Cheever,  who  learned  his  Latin  at 
Christ's  Hospital  in  England.     With  Tompson  and  Cheever  the 


HppenMr  63 

history  of  the  School  connects  itself  with  the  lives  of  the  leaders 
of  the  Colony. 

I  used  to  encourage  the  belief  among  our  boys  that  Cheever 
and  Milton  were  fellow-students  in  St.  Paul's  School  in  London. 
I  went  so  far  as  to  make  an  unfortunate  offer  to  give  some  prize, 
I  forget  what,  to  anybody  who  could  prove  that  Ezekiel  Cheever 
blacked  John  Milton's  boots,  or  in  any  way  served  him  as  fag  at 
school.  But  it  proved  that  the  two  boys  did  not  even  go  to  the 
same  school.  I  have  been  more  shy  of  my  historical  prizes  from 
that  day  to  this.  Would  it  have  been  better  perhaps  to  have 
doubt  than  certainty?  However  this  may  have  been,  Cheever 
came  to  this  country  as  early  as  1637.  He  was  in  Davenport's 
Seven  Pillared  State  at  New  Haven.  The  New  Haven  people  are 
proud  of  him  as  we  are.  Perhaps  through  Davenport's  influence, 
when  he  came  from  New  Haven,  at  the  eager  request  of  our  First 
Church  in  Boston,  Cheever  also  removed  from  Connecticut  to 
Massachusetts,  and  here  "  the  dear  old  man,"  as  they  called  him, 
lived  to  a  great  age.  He  was  first  a  teacher  at  Ipswich  and 
Charlestown,  and  then  was  invited  to  take  charge  of  our  Boston 
School.  Judge  Sewall  was  one  of  his  friends,  and  in  a  modest 
way  intimates  that  he  and  some  of  the  rest  of  them  contributed 
a  sort  of  old  age  pension  to  the  decline  of  the  old  man's  years. 

Following  him  as  a  Master  for  twenty-six  years,  was  Nathaniel 
Williams,  whose  name,  like  that  of  Tompson's,  will  be  found 
among  the  earlier  poets,  so-called,  of  the  infant  State.  He  also 
lived  to  a  good  old  age.  He  had  but  little  more  than  six  months 
in  which  to  teach  Franklin  Latin.  And  Franklin  speaks  of  him 
somewhere  with  respect.  Franklin  was  himself  withdrawn  from 
this  School  to  that  other  university  known  as  a  tallow  chandler's 
shop,  in  which  he  went  on  with  all  the  practical  learning  which 
made  him  of  so  much  use  for  nearly  a  century.  His  statue  now 
stands  in  what  was  the  school  yard  at  the  time  when  Franklin 
played  marbles,  and  it  is,  according  to  me,  the  best  of  the  bronze 
statues  in  public  places  in  Boston. 

Nathaniel  Williams  was  immediately  succeeded  in  the  office  of 
Head  Master  by  John  Loyell.    John  Lovell,  for  the  last  years  of 


64  Hppenbix 

his  administration,  had  as  his  principal  assistant  his  own  son 
James  Lovell.  When  the  American  Revolution  approached,  in 
the  times  which  tried  men's  souls,  John  Lovell  held  to  his  King 
and  to  the  gentlemen  who  represented  his  King  in  the  local  gov- 
ernment of  the  State,  not  yet  new  born,  while  James  Lovell,  the 
son,  was  on  the  Patriot  side.  Harrison  Gray  Otis,  afterwards 
Senator  of  the  United  States,  told  me  in  1840,  how  he  himself,  a 
little  boy  of  nine  years  old,  entered  the  schoolroom  in  School 
Street,  on  the  19th  of  April,  1775,  just  in  time  to  hear  old  Lovell 
say,  "War's  begun  and  School's  done,  deponite  libros."  This 
shows  that  they  still  used  the  Latin  language  in  the  work  of  the 
School.  It  also  shows  a  certain  fear  on  Lovell's  side  that  the 
pupils  would  not  have  understood  if  Lovell  had  said,  "  Initium 
belli,  scholcB finis." 

At  all  events,  he  did  not  say  that.  Otis  went  home  and  did 
not  go  to  school  again  till  the  Evacuation  of  Boston,  March, 
1776.  Samuel  Hunt,  the  Master  of  the  North  Grammar  School, 
was  then  ordered  to  take  charge  of  our  School,  and  he  remained 
in  office  till  1805.  After  his  death  William  Biglow  reigned, 
whose  name  is  still  recollected  as  the  author  of  some  good  Maca- 
ronic poetry.  Then  came  Benjamin  Apthorp  Gould,  Frederic 
Percival  Leverett,  Charles  Knapp  Dillaway,  Epes  Sargent  Dix- 
well,  Francis  Gardner,  Augustine  Milton  Gay,  Moses  Merrill, 
and  Arthur  I.  Fiske,  who  have  been  the  Head  Masters  of  the 
School.  In  many  of  these  cases  the  Head  Master  has  continued 
his  direction  of  the  School  for  a  large  part  of  his  life. 

It  has  had  at  times  almost  a  national  reputation.  Boys  were 
sent  from  a  distance,  even  from  other  provinces,  to  have  the  ad- 
vantage of  its  discipline.  It  is  one  of  our  boasts  at  the  School 
that  five  of  the  forty-five  signers  of  the  Declaration  of  Independ- 
ence were  our  boys.  These  were  Benjamin  Franklin,  Samuel 
Adams,  Robert  Treat  Paine,  John  Hancock,  and  William  Hooper, 
of  North  Carolina. 

The  founders  of  this  School  in  the  seventeenth  century  were 
educated  English  gentlemen.  Under  the  lead  of  the  same  men, 
and  men  like  them,  the  General  Court  of  the  Colony  established 


HppeuMx  65 

the  Public  School  system  of  Massachusetts,  which  is,  I  suppose, 
the  first  Public  School  system  established  by  law  in  the  world 
after  the  decay  of  the  schools  in  Sybaris  and  the  other  Greek 
cities  of  Southern  Italy  and  of  Sicily.  Of  the  State  of  Thurii, 
planted  on  the  foundations  of  Sybaris,  it  is  recorded  that  under 
the  laws  of  Charondas,  "All  citizens  should  be  instructed  in 
letters,  the  city  paying  the  salaries  of  the  teachers.  For  he  held 
that  the  poor,  not  being  able  to  pay  their  teachers  from  their 
own  property,  would  be  deprived  of  the  most  valuable  discipline." 
I  have  met  with  no  similar  record  of  Legislation  till  the  act  of 
the  General  Court  to  which  I  refer.  The  founders  of  the  Latin 
School  undoubtedly  had  in  mind  the  English  Grammar  Schools 
of  their  own  time  ;  and  where  they  speak  of  the  Free  Schools  of 
those  days,  they  do  not  mean  necessarily  schools  in  which  the 
pupils  paid  no  scot  to  the  teacher  or  to  the  government  of  the 
school.  The  English  term  Free  School  meant  then  and  means 
now,  a  school  to  which  any  boy  might  be  sent  on  equal  terms 
with  any  other  boy.  That  is  to  say,  the  English  Free  School, 
so  called,  corresponded  and  corresponds  with  any  "academy" 
in  New  England.  The  word  means  that  it  was  not  a  school  for 
the  cutlers'  guild,  or  the  shoemakers'  guild,  or  any  other  guild, 
nor  was  it  a  school  under  the  patronage  of  this  or  that  college  or 
church,  but  it  was  a  school  "free"  for  any  person  who  wished 
to  send  his  son  there,  subject  to  the  conditions  of  the  establish- 
ment. In  a  Democratic  colony  like  Massachusetts,  which  was 
in  fact  a  Democratic  State  from  the  very  beginning,  a  Free 
School  soon  came  to  mean  a  school  which  was  supported  at  the 
public  charge.  But  in  the  beginning  the  pupils  themselves  or 
their  parents  paid  more  or  less  toward  the  cost  of  the  conduct  of 
the  school.  Well  down  in  the  eighteenth  century,  the  parents 
were  assessed  for  the  wood  which  was  burned  in  the  school  fires, 
and  to  a  period  comparatively  recent,  the  boys  themselves  were 
expected  to  make  the  fires,  to  sweep  out  the  schoolroom  and  to 
do  other  similar  services.  So  far  removed  were  they  from  the 
customs  of  our  times — where  it  has  been  truly  said  of  one  of  our 
larger  cities,  that  the  janitors  of  the  Public  Schools  have  more 


66  appenbtx 

to  do  with  their  management  than  the  School  Committee  has. 
On  the  other  hand,  every  boy  in  Massachusetts  might  present 
himself  at  the  town  school.  Ours  was  at  first  the  only  public 
school  in  the  town.  As  population  increased,  and  the  demand 
increased,  another  free  grammar  school  was  opened  at  the  North 
End,  so  that  the  two  were  designated  as  the  North  Free  Gram- 
mar School  and  the  South  Free  Grammar  School ;  the  word 
grammar  implying  not  that  English  Grammar  was  taught,  for 
it  was  not,  but  that  Latin  and  Greek  were  taught,  and  the  boys 
obtained  a  considerable  facility  in  the  use  of  the  ancient  languages. 
Indeed  the  requisition  of  the  Colonial  law,  which  is  so  often 
cited,  is  a  requisition  for  such  schools  as  prepare  boys  for  col- 
lege ;  the  primitive  notion  being  that  Satan  could  be  resisted  by 
a  proper  knowledge  of  the  Greek  and  Latin  languages  in  which 
were  contained  the  weapons  for  the  fight  against  him.  In  study- 
ing the  lives  and  histories  of  the  men  who  made  the  American 
Revolution,  and  who  afterwards  carried  the  commerce  of  America 
into  every  seaport  of  the  world,  you  will  get  a  glimpse  every  now 
and  then  of  the  result  of  the  early  education  in  such  a  Grammar 
School.  I  mean  by  this,  that  there  is  more  evidence  of  an  ac- 
quaintance with  the  Latin  and  Greek  classics  in  the  writings  of 
those  men  than  there  is  in  the  writings  of  an  equal  number  of 
men  of  affairs  today.  Governor  Hancock,  who  signed  the  Dec- 
laration of  Independence,  as  Governor  of  Massachusetts  main- 
tained a  fine  hospitality,  and  received  at  his  house  the  French 
officers  of  D'Estaing's  Fleet,  when  that  Fleet  lay  in  Boston  Har- 
bor. But  Hancock  could  not  speak  French,  and  there  are  anec- 
dotes on  record  which  intimate  that  he  did  speak  Latin  with  the 
gentlemen  whom  he  met  there.  There  was  in  that  century  un- 
doubtedly, more  occasion  for  maintaining  a  colloquial  knowledge 
of  the  language  than  there  is  now.  And  while  Franklin  never 
makes  a  quotation  from  the  Latin  or  the  Greek,  and  while  he 
speaks  of  the  few  months  at  our  Latin  School  as  containing  all 
his  school  education  in  such  matters,  it  has  seemed  to  me  that 
there  is  evidence  that  he  was  acquainted  with  the  Latin  Classics. 
I  think  he  knew  what  the  famous  epigram  meant  which  says  of 


HppenMx  67 

him,  "  Eripuit  coelo  fulmen  sceptrumque  tyrannis."  He  did  not 
object  to  the  Latin  inscriptions  on  the  Continental  Medals. 

Ezekiel  Cheever  wrote  and  printed,  "  The  Accidence,"  a  Latin 
Grammar  which  was  used  in  our  schools  nearly  to  the  end  of  the 
century  in  which  he  died.  There  were  one  or  two  traces  of  such 
books  in  Adam's  Latin  Grammar,  which  in  Mr.  Gould's  edition 
of  it  was  the  book  put  into  the  hands  of  schoolboys  as  late  as 
1830  ;  a  book  without  any  philological  value,  but  to  this  hour  not 
a  bad  monument  of  what  was  the  scholastic  treatment  of  the 
Latin  language.  It  would  seem  as  if  the  boys  of  the  eighteenth 
century  carried  their  Latin  reading  before  entering  college  quite 
as  far  as  such  reading  is  carried  now. 

Even  a  rough  computation  of  the  population  of  Boston  and  the 
pupils  in  the  two  Latin  Schools,  shows  that  some  knowledge  of 
the  classical  languages  must,  on  the  whole,  have  been  an  accom- 
plishment much  more  general  in  1750  than  now  in  any  com- 
mercial city  of  America.  That  is  to  say,  in  a  town  of  fifteen 
thousand  people,  there  were  at  any  given  moment  more  than  two 
hundred  boys  in  attendance  at  these  schools.  Now,  the  whole  of 
what  we  call  the  school  population  of  Boston,  if  we  speak  of 
boys  only,  would  have  been  fifteen  hundred  boys  of  all  ages  from 
five  to  sixteen.  Of  the  ages  from  ten  to  sixteen,  when  they 
would  have  attended  Latin  Schools,  there  can  hardly  have  been 
more  than  seven  hundred  boys  in  the  town.  Now  in  fact,  it 
seems  that  two  hundred  of  these  boys  were  studying  the  Latin 
language.  They  had  enough  knowledge  of  it,  at  least,  to  put 
away  their  books  when  John  Lovell  used  to  say,  "  Deponite 
libros."  They  had  so  much  knowledge  of  it  that  a  member  of 
the  Legislature  would  not  have  been  afraid  to  make  a  quotation 
in  the  Latin  language.  On  the  other  hand  I  think  no  one  would 
say  today  that  one  third  of  such  boys  of  Boston  or  New  York 
have  had  training  in  Latin  or  in  Greek.  Perhaps  this  knowledge, 
even  superficial,  of  the  Latin  shows  its  result  in  the  literature  of 
the  time.  I  have  thought  that  one  detected  Latin  idioms  in  the 
English  of  the  Revolution  which  he  would  not  find  in  the  lead- 
ing editorials  of  today. 


68  HppenMx 

From  1776,  when  the  two  Latin  Schools  were  united,  in  the 
extreme  stringency  of  the  times,  to  the  year  1816,  when  Benjamin 
Apthorp  Gould  was  made  the  Head  Master  of  the  School,  is  the 
period  when  the  record  of  the  School  as  a  force  in  the  public  edu- 
cation is  comparatively  poor.  I  have  wondered  whether  the 
eager  and  strenuous  mercantile  life  of  the  town,  turning  from 
being  a  ship  building  town  with  some  interest  in  the  Fisheries, 
into  a  rich  and  commercial  city,  did  not  for  the  moment  show 
itself  in  a  diminishing  interest  in  classical  study.  But  with 
wealth  and  commerce  with  all  the  world,  the  interest  of  the  larg- 
est education  asserted  itself.  The  School  Committee  of  Boston 
adopted  measures  to  "  give  an  additional  impulse  to  the  school." 
The  most  important  of  the  changes  made  was  a  regulation  "  re- 
newing the  ancient  usage  of  the  school,"  that  boys  should  be 
admitted  only  once  a  year.  This  regulation  has  been  retained 
to  this  time.  The  greatest  credit  is  due  to  the  executive  ability 
and  to  the  careful  learning  of  Benjamin  Apthorp  Gould,  who  at 
the  age  of  twenty-seven  was  appointed  the  Head  Master  of  the 
School,  and  after  the  new  arrangement  was  made,  he  placed 
it  at  once  at  the  very  head  of  classical  instruction  in  New 
England. 

Mr.  Gould's  five  essays,  published  in  five  successive  annual 
numbers  of  what  is  known  as  the  Prize  Book,  are  dignified  dis- 
cussions of  methods  of  education,  and,  in  especial,  of  the  prog- 
ress of  what  is  called  Classical  Education.  The  title  of  the  book 
itself  indicates  the  renewal  of  interest  in  the  careful  school  work. 
Some  prizes  had  been  instituted,  in  the  fashion  of  the  day,  for 
the  best  work  done  in  the  school.  The  essays  or  translations 
which  the  boys  made  were  printed,  or  some  of  them  were,  as 
indication  to  the  world  of  Boston  of  what  their  boys  could  do. 
It  is  interesting  now  to  find  the  names  of  Robert  C.  Winthrop, 
Charles  Sumner,  Wendell  Phillips,  and  James  Freeman  Clarke 
put  in  print  for  the  first  time  as  they  appeared  at  the  ages  of 
thirteen  or  fourteen  among  the  competitors  for  School  Prizes. 
Mr.  Sumner  received  two  prizes  in  1824 ;  one  for  a  translation 
from  Sallust  and  one  for  a  translation  from  Ovid.     In  printing 


HppenMi  69 

these  essays,  Mr.  Gould  would  make  a  handsome  book  with  the 
results  of  his  own  studies  on  what  we  now  call  the  higher  educa- 
tion. The  dignity  and  prestige  which  the  School  had  at  that 
time  was  not  easily  lost.  The  school  authorities  of  the  city  have 
always  been  proud  of  it,  and  have  maintained  a  line  of  teachers 
whose  work  is  well  known  among  the  people  who  take  any  inter- 
est in  the  history  of  American  schools.  Mr.  Frederic  Percival 
Leverett  was  the  accomplished  and  accurate  author  of  a  Latin 
Lexicon  which  in  one  form  or  another  still  holds  a  place  among 
the  working  books  of  Latin  Schools.  Francis  Gardner,  who 
was  foi  forty  years  head  master  of  the  School,  abridged  this 
Lexicon  so  that  it  might  be  used  more  conveniently,  and  his 
work  held  its  place  in  use  till  quite  recently.  Mr.  Leverett's  im- 
mediate successor  was  Charles  Knapp  Dillaway.  I  was  one  of 
his  pupils,  and  it  happened  to  me,  therefore,  to  be  called  to  assist 
in  the  services  at  his  funeral.  He  died  in  1889.  He  had  been  a 
schoolboy  in  this  very  school,  when  he  was  nine  years  old,  and 
his  connection  with  the  Public  Schools  of  Boston  had  been  un- 
interrupted except  by  the  four  years  that  he  spent  in  Harvaid 
College,  from  the  time  when  he  was  nine  years  old  till  the  time 
when  he  died.  That  is  to  say,  in  the  two  hundred  and  forty-nine 
years  of  the  histoiy  of  Boston,  this  gentleman  had  been  more  or 
less  closely  connected  witli  our  education  here  for  more  than  a 
quarter  of  the  time.  He  was  then  the  working  member  of  the 
Trustees  of  the  Roxbury  Latin  School.  So  recent  is  what  we 
call  our  ancient  history. 

Mr.  Dillaway  was  followed  in  his  charge  by  Epes  Sargent  Dix- 
well,  a  grandson  of  Hunt,  who  was  one  of  the  earlier  teachers. 
Mr.  Dixwell  had  every  qualification  for  such  a  post.  He  was 
intelligently  enthusiastic  about  the  Latin  language  and  its  litera- 
ture. He  is  the  only  old  man  whom  I  remember,  who  till  after 
he  had  passed  four  score  years  wrote  on  any  fit  occasion  his  little 
Horatian  ode  in  the  Latin  language.  Some  unfortunate  disa- 
greement with  some  committee  now  forgotten  led  him  to  resign 
his  place  and  to  establish  a  private  school  for  precisely  the  pur- 
pose of  the  Boston  Latin  School,  which  has  led  the  way  in  several 


70  appenMi 


private  schools  which  have  maintained  the  standard  of  scholar- 
ship which  Mr.  Gould  and  Mr.  Leverett  had  fixed  at  our  School. 
Mr.  Dixwell's  immediate  successor  was  Francis  Gardner.  I 
speak  of  him  with  regard,  not  to  say  tenderness,  because  I  was  a 
pupil  under  him,  and  like  all  of  his  other  pupils  I  had  a  great 
respect,  not  simply  for  his  knowledge  of  the  Classics,  but  for 
the  moral  standard  of  life  which  he  held  before  us.  I  have  often 
said  in  public  addresses  that  at  the  time  when  I  was  a  schoolboy, 
there  was  no  boy  in  school  that  would  have  dared  to  tell  a  lie. 
The  moral  tone  of  the  School  was  so  high  that  any  liar  would 
have  been  sent  to  Coventry,  and  a  boy  who  had  transgressed 
would  have  compelled  his  father  to  take  him  away  from  the  igno- 
miny which  awaited  him  in  the  school  room.  Mr.  Gardner  him- 
self was  severe  in  his  dealings  with  laziness  or  with  anything 
which  offended  his  sense  of  morals.  But  as  the  schoolboys  say, 
he  was  "fair,"  and  every  boy  under  his  rather  strict  administra- 
tion recognized  the  fact  that  the  law  was  the  same  for  one  as  for 
another,  and  that  Gardner's  favor  was  to  be  won  simply  by  in- 
dustry and  purity  of  life.  He  had  no  veneration  for  the  person 
whose  success  was  simply  in  working  out  the  difference  between 
the  Subjunctive  and  the  Optative.  On  Mr.  Gardner's  death,  for 
a  few  months  only  Mr.  Augustine  Milton  Gay  was  the  Head  Mas- 
ter. Mr.  Moses  Merrill,  the  sub-master,  succeeded  him  as  Head 
Master,  and  on  his  resignation,  the  present  principal,  a  sub- 
master,  was  promoted  in  the  same  way.  The  School  has  noth- 
ing to  fear  in  his  administration  of  it. 

Such  are  the  condensed  annals  of  the  oldest  school  in  America. 
Unfortunately,  its  catalogues  from  1635  to  1730  were  not  pre- 
served. It  is  due  to  the  diligent  affection  of  the  alumni  of  the 
last  generation  that  there  have  been  collected  from  the  family 
traditions  and  the  histories  of  Massachusetts  the  names  of  some 
of  the  hoys  who  were  trained  there.  That  list  begins  with  John 
Hull,  the  goldsmith  who  stamped  the  silver  of  Massachusetts 
when  she  assumed  that  royal  prerogative  in  1652.  On  the  same 
list  is  the  name  of  Benjamin  Franklin,  who  has  made  an  affec- 
tionate allusion  to  the  School  in  his  Autobiography. 


HppenMx  71 

As  soon  as  John  Lovell  was  made  the  Master,  the  regular 
catalogue  of  the  School  began,  which  lasted  all  through  his  dy- 
nasty. The  earlier  a  boy  presented  himself  at  Lovell's  house 
for  examination,  the  better  was  his  chance  for  a  good  seat  in  the 
schoolroom,  so  that  the  little  fellows  rose  early  on  that  morning 
and  reported  there  just  below  the  schoolhouse  in  hope  of  obtain- 
ing this  privilege.  On  the  catalogue  of  Harvard  College  for  the 
same  year,  the  boys  were  rated  according  to  the  social  rank  of 
their  parents.  But  under  the  more  democratic  system  of  the 
Town  of  Boston,  the  boy  who  rose  earliest  in  the  morning  and 
washed  his  face  earliest  and  arrived  at  Lovell's  house  earliest,  is 
first  upon  the  list.  This  list  fortunately  was  preserved  by  Lovell 
and  his  son.  It  breaks  off  with  the  American  Revolution,  and 
again  the  complete  catalogue  list  of  the  School  is  broken.  But 
with  Mr.  Gould's  more  accurate  history  it  begins  again,  and  we 
have  the  names  of  thousands  upon  thousands  of  the  alumni  of 
the  School,  for  many  of  whom  it  was  the  only  University.  They 
have  extended  a  knowledge  of  it  to  all  parts  of  the  country.  The 
boys  of  the  School  to  this  day  are  proud  of  course  that  five  of 
their  own  number  were  among  the  forty-five  signers  of  the  Dec- 
laration of  Independence.  Indeed,  we  are  fond  of  saying  that 
what  the  old  writing  masters  used  to  call  "  the  Boston  style  of 
writing "  may  be  traced  among  the  signatures  of  the  nation's 
charter. 

The  Hall  of  Fame  in  New  York  has  twenty-nine  names  agreed 
upon  by  ninety-seven  judges.  It  does  not  include  any  person 
who  had  died  after  1890.  Of  the  twenty-nine  names  who  received 
the  majority  of  votes,  three  or  four  were  Latin  School  boys, — 
Benjamin  Franklin,  Ralph  Waldo  Emerson,  perhaps  Samuel 
Breese  Morse,  and  Henry  Ward  Beecher.  And  William  Ellery 
Channing  was  on  our  school  Committee  in  the  days  of  Gould. 
These  five  names  are  in  a  list  of  Heroes  which  can  afford  to  omit 
our  Samuel  Adams,  John  Hancock  and  Charles  Sumner. 


72  HppenMx 

IV. 

IPttnetal  Sermon  ot  1Rev»  Jobn  BarnarD  on 
IRev.  Samuel  Cbeever 

The  funeral  sermon  Rev.  John  Barnard  preached  on 
that  "aged  and  faithful  servant  of  God,"  the  Rev. 
Samuel  Cheever,  of  Marblehead,  under  the  title, 
"Elijah's  Mantle,"  was  printed  in  Boston  by  "  S. 
Gerrish  near  the  Brick  Meeting-House  in  Cornhill  1724.** 
(Found  in  the  Boston  Public  Library.) 

After  generalizing  somewhat  on  the  text,  II.  Kings 
ii.  14,  he  finishes  the  sermon  as  follows  : — 

And  this  leads  me  into  the  mournful  Theme  which  this  day 
calls  for,  occasioned  by  the  removal  of  that  Man  of  God,  the 
aged  Reverend  Mr.  Samuel  Cheever,  from  among  us.  It  pleased 
God,  from  whom  comes  down  every  good  and  perfect  Gift,  to 
furnish  him  for  the  work  of  the  Ministry,  with  no  small  Abili- 
ties, both  natural  and  acquired,  being  owner  of  a  solid  Judgment, 
a  copious  Invention,  and  a  tenacious  Memory,  which  were  im- 
proved in  him,  by  a  due  application  of  himself  to  Reading, 
Meditation  and  Prayer. 

God  brought  him  among  you  some  time  in  November,  1668, 
from  which  Time,  those  of  you  that  are  advanced  in  Years, 
know  how  much  he  has  been  a  common  Father  to  the  whole 
Town,  in  the  many  temporal  Advantages  which  you  have 
received  from  him  ;  he  truly  went  about  doing  good,  and  serving 
you  in  all  your  Interests. 

But  as  preaching  is  peculiarly  the  Minister's  Work,  so  he  was 
well  fitted  herefor  by  an  uncommon  Knowledge  in  the  Holy 
Scripture,  being  an  excellent  Text-man,  and  carrying  a  Body  of 
Divinity  in  his  Head,  which  he  would  often  say  to  me,  it  was 
good  for  a  Divine  to  be  well  furnished  withal. 


Hppenbtx  73 

In  his  publick  Discourses  to  you  he  endeavored  to  preserve 
the  truth,  purity  and  simplicity  of  the  Gospel,  teaching  you  the 
Truth  as  it  is  in  Jesus.  He  made  it  his  great  care  to  shew  you 
your  Sin  and  Danger,  and  where  your  only  Remedy  lies  ;  that 
you  might  be  directed  to  flee  from  the  wrath  to  come,  and  lay 
hold  on  the  Hope  set  before  you.  And  as  he  aimed  at  the 
winning  of  Soals  to  his  great  Master,  so  he  sought  not  to  please 
your  Fancy  and  tickle  your  ears  with  studied  Elocution  and 
formal  Periods,  but  delivered  the  Mind  of  God  to  you  with  such 
plainness  and  urgency  of  Argument  and  Persuasion  as  becomes 
the  Gospel  of  Christ ;  and  he  shunned  not  to  declare  unto  you 
the  whole  Counsel  of  God. 

And  how  fervent  was  he  in  treating  with  your  immortal 
Souls,  delivering  himself  to  you  with  that  flame  and  heart,  that 
earnestness,  and  vigour  which  shewed  his  sincere  Zeal  in  his 
Master's  Service,  and  his  hearty  desire  that  you  all  might  be 
saved.  He  plainly  shewed  the  lively  Impressions  of  the  Truths 
he  preached  to  you  upon  his  own  Heart,  while  the  fervency  of 
his  Voice  pierced  your  ears,  that  the  united  Light  and  Heat 
might  strike  the  more  forcibly  upon  your  Minds,  and  gain  the 
more  ready  Compliance  with  the  great  Truths  that  were  delivered 
to  you. 

And  he  was  as  constant  and  assiduous,  as  fervent  and  zealous 
a  Preacher  of  the  Word  of  God  among  you  ;  so  that,  if  I  mistake 
not,  from  his  first  coming  among  you  until  the  time  that  Age 
had  worn  him  out,  you  never  were,  more  than  once,  without  the 
constant  Entertainments  of  your  Sabbaths,  your  stated  Feasts 
and  3'our  New  Moons,  tho'  he  was  alone  for  about  48  Years  : 
God  so  graciously  confirmed  his  Health  that  for  more  than  50 
Years  he  never  was  hindered  from  coming  to  you  in  the  Name 
of  the  Lord  by  any  Sickness. 

Indeed,  the  infirmities  of  Age  obliged  him  to  take  leave  of  his 
publick  stated  Exercises  in  October,  1719,  which  he  did,  from 
those  Words  of  our  Saviour,  John  ix.  4,  "  I  must  work  the  works 
of  him  that  sent  me  while  it  is  day ;  the  night  cometh  when  no 
man  can  work."     And  yet,  about  a  Year  after  this,  upon  a  special 


74  appenbtx 


Occasion,  he  entertained  us  with  a  short  but  plain  and  fervent 
Excitement,  to  be  Zealous  of  Good  Works. 

While  his  strength  and  vigour  continued  he  was  a  very  just 
and  methodical  Preacher  (and  doubtless  had  he  been  fixed  in  a 
politer  Place  he  would  have  made  a  brighter  Figure),  tho'  in  his 
latter  days  he  gave  more  into  an  expository  way  of  treating  the 
several  Texts  that  occurred  in  his  preaching  ;  and  to  the  last  he 
could  make  no  publick  use  of  Notes,  but  delivered  all  memoriter. 

And  yet,  after  Age  had  laid  him  aside  from  publick  Labour, 
he  was  still  at  his  Work,  and  his  Mind  so  intensely  set  upon  it, 
that  I  scarce  ever  came  into  his  Company  at  any  time  without 
finding  him  at  his  Study,  or  his  Mind  taken  up  with  the  publick 
Duties  of  the  Sabbath  ;  and  he  would  be  continually  expressing 
his  concern  lest  he  should  not  be  able  to  do  anything  of  it,  and 
desiring  me  to  prepare  for  all  the  Day,  lest  he  should  not  be  able 
to  come  out,  which  plainly  shewed  the  hearty  Delight  he  took 
in  his  Work. 

He  was  a  Man  of  Peace,  of  a  Catholick  Mind,  and  extensive 
Philanthropy  and  good  Will  to  all  Men,  without  confining 
Religion  to  a  particular  Sect;  a  great  Peace-maker  among  his 
contending  Neighbors,  and  never  made,  or  excited  Parties,  or  so 
much  as  joined  himself  to  any  (that  I  can  learn)  but  those  that 
were  for  God  and  Religion,  against  Vice  and  Immorality. 

His  Conversation  was  grave,  yet  pleasant,  suitable  to  a  steady 
composure  of  Mind,  which  he  usually  enjoyed,  though  at  proper 
Seasons  he  knew  how  to  be  warm. 

His  life  among  you  has  been  the  life  of  a  Christian,  and  the 
whole  tenor  of  it  a  manifesting  an  entire  Submission  to  and 
Satisfaction  in  the  disposing  Providence  of  God  ;  and  you  your- 
selves are  Witnesses  how  ho  lily  and  unblameably  he  hath 
behaved  himself,  walking  before  you  in  the  paths  of  serious 
Godliness,  a  plain  and  a  humble  Man. 

When  you  called  me  to  the  pastoral  Office  with  him,  a  few 
Years  ago,  tho'  his  own  Delight  in  the  work  of  the  Lord  among 
you  made  him  not  so  forward  as  some  might  have  expected,  to 
have  an  Assistant  joined  with  him,  yet  he  evidenced  to  you  an 


HppenMx  75 

entire  Satisfaction  in  your  Proceedings  ;  and  I  have  cause  to 
acknowledge  the  goodness  of  God  to  me  herein,  that  as  a  Son 
with  a  Father,  so  he  received  me,  repeating  the  Words  of  good 
old  Simeon  upon  his  return  to  his  House  from  my  publick  Or- 
dination, "  Now,  Lord,  lettest  thou  thy  Servant  depart  in  Peace." 

It  was  a  signal  and  uncommon  Favour  of  God  to  him,  that 
tho'  he  lived  to  the  Age  of  fourscore  and  almost  five,  yet  he  had 
so  settled  a  Constitution  and  firm  a  Health  as  to  be  able  to  say, 
that  he  never  was  Sick  in  all  his  Life  ;  a  day's  Indisposition  and 
some  small  touches  of  the  Sciatica,  he  has  sometimes  known. 
And  as  his  Health  was  firm,  so  at  upwards  of  fourscore  he  could 
read  without  the  help  of  Spectacles,  and  had  his  Hearing  quick 
as  Youth  to  the  last  week  of  his  Life  ;  but  the  Powers  of  his 
Mind,  for  some  few  Years  before  he  died,  failed,  especially  his 
memory,  whereby  he  was  greatly  unfitted  even  for  common  Con- 
versation ;  and  yet  his  constant  Family  Prayers  were  orderly 
and  regular ;  so  did  Grace  shine  in  the  decays  of  Nature. 

And  while  the  decays  of  Age  laid  him  by  from  publick  Serv- 
ice, how  exemplarily  Patient  was  he  under  such  a  Rebuke  ?  He 
would  often  say  to  me  :  "Age  is  too  heavy  for  me,  but  I  must 
bear  it.  I  can't  die  when  I  would.  I  must  patiently  wait  God's 
Time ;  my  Times  are  in  His  Hands  ;  I  rejoice  to  see  that  God 
has  provided  for  His  People  before  I  go.  God  has  satisfied  me 
with  long  life." 

Thus  continued  he  at  Work,  and  patiently  submitting  to  the 
Will  of  God,  till  a  few  days  ago  his  senses  wholly  left  him,  and 
the  Night  before  last  he  died,  and  truly  died  ;  his  Lamp  of  Life 
fairly  burning  out,  without  being  put  out ;  for  he  felt  no  Sick- 
ness nor  Pain  to  the  last,  nor  shewed  any  the  least  tokens  of 
them  even  in  his  expiring  moments. 

So,  while  by  the  Grace  of  Christ  in  him,  he  was  secured 
against  the  Terrours  of  the  second  Death,  thro'  the  Favour  of 
God  to  him,  he  knew  nothing  of  the  usual  ghastly  Harbingers, 
nor  the  shocking  Terrours  of  a  Natural  Death  ;  but  as  he  was 
always  calm  and  easy,  in  the  possession  of  a  comfortable  Hope, 
without  strong  emotions  of  Joy,  or  the  distress  of  anxious  Tears, 


76  BppenMx 

so  he  quietly  fell  asleep  in  Jesus,  and  is  gone  to  receive  the  Re- 
wards of  his  long  and  faithful  Services. 

I  will  only  add,  that  the  little  Time  I  have  had  will  sufficiently 
apologize,  that  I  have  given  no  better  Account  of  this  aged  and 
faithful  Servant  of  Jesus  Christ ;  and  yet,  such  as  it  is,  I  know 
his  humble,  modest  Tho'ts  of  himself  would  not  have  been  easily 
prevailed  upon  to  have  allowed  it ;  for  I  well  remember,  that 
about  a  Month  or  two  ago,  upon  my  asking  him  a  Question, 
which  he  happened  to  misunderstand,  he  replied  to  me,  with 
some  warmth,  "  Prithee,  don't  go  about  to  flatter  me  ;  'tis  eno' 
that  I  stand  to  my  own  Master ;  my  greatest  care  is  to  be  ac- 
cepted of  him." 

And  now  may  the  God  of  all  Grace  and  Consolation  afford 
his  most  compassionate  Regards  unto  the  devout  and  meek 
Hand-maid  of  the  Lord,  who  has  been  the  Companion  of  his 
Days  for  about  fifty-four  Years  ;  comfort  her  under  her  Sorrows, 
and  give  unto  her  an  happy  and  endless  meeting  with  him  in  Glory. 

May  God  be  a  Father  unto  the  mourning  Children,  and  more 
abundantly  enrich  them  with  the  Blessings  of  Goodness,  and 
return  into  their  Bosome  the  many  Prayers  their  ascended 
Father  hath  laid  out  for  them. 

May  God  take  care  of  this  bereaved  Town  and  Flock  of  His, 
and  always  shower  down  of  the  Gifts  and  Graces  of  His  Spirit 
upon  it ;  and  especially  may  I  take  hold  of  Elijah's  Mantle,  and 
say,  Let  a  double  portion  of  his  Spirit  rest  upon  me. 

My  Brethren,  call  to  Mind  the  Things  which  you  have  here- 
tofore heard  and  learned  from  your  deceased  Pastor ;  and  so  let 
aged  Samuel,  now  dead,  yet  speak  unto  you  ;  and  be  you  follow- 
ers of  him  wherein  he  followed  Christ.  And  may  God  reward 
your  Kindness  and  the  good  Will  of  the  Town,  in  the  Support 
which,  to  their  Honour,  they  have  continued  to  afford  to  him, 
notwithstanding  his  being  called  off  from  Publick  Usefulness 
for  some  Years  past. 

Now  make  your  earnest  and  daily  Prayers  for  your  surviving 
Pastor,  that  he  may  be  strengthened  to  his  Work,  and  succeeded 
therein. 


BppenMx  77 

And  let  it  be  the  care  of  us  all  so  to  live,  that  we  may  die  in 
Peace,  like  him  that  is  now  gone  before  us  ;  that  when  our  Dust 
returns  to  its  Dust,  our  Spirits  may  ascend  to  the  Lord  God  of 
Elijah  ;  that  we  and  our  departed  Father,  may  have  a  happy 
meeting  at  the  Right  Hand  of  Christ,  that  we  nuiy  be  a  Crown 
of  Rejoicing  to  him  in  the  Day  of  the  Lord,  and  he  may  be  able 
to  say  concerning  us,  Behold  /,  and  the  children  -which  God  has 
graciously  given  to  me;  and  we  may  mutually  be  employed  in 
the  everlasting  Services  of  the  Redeemer,  and  be  together  un- 
speakably and  forever  happy  in  the  possession  of  the  Crown  of 
Glory,  which  fadeth  not  away. 


The  Election  Sermon  Mr.  Cheever  preached,  May  28, 
171 2,  which  Drake's  History  of  Boston  says  was  the 
first  one  preached  in  the  Old  South  Church,  the  others 
having  been  preached  in  the  First  Church,  was  titled 
thus:  "  God's  Sovereign  Government  Among  the  iVa- 
tions  Asserted  in  a  Sermon  Preached  before  His  Excel- 
lency the  Governor^  the  Honourable  Council^  and 
Representations  of  the  Province  of  the  Massachusetts 
Bay  in  New  England  on  May  28,  171 2,  being  the 
day  for  Election  of  His  Majesty's  Council  for  that 
Province.  By  Samuel  Cheever,  Pastor  of  the  Church 
in  Marblehead.  Psal.  xcv.  3,  6  (Text  in  full)  ;  Psal. 
ii.  12.  (Text  in  full).  Boston:  Printed  by  B.  Green. 
Sold  at  the  Booksellers  Shops.     171 2." 

At  a  Council  held  at  the  Council  Chamber  in  Boston, 
June  23,  1713,  it  was  voted  to  pay  "  Five  pounds,  two 
shillings  and  ten  pence  for  printing  Mr.  Cheever's  Elec- 
tion Sermon  and  making  it  up." 

In  his  Autobiography  Mr.  Barnard  refers  to  Mr. 
Cheever  as  wholly  a  "memoriter  preacher." 


78  appendix 

V. 

Through  the  marriage  of  the  Rev.  Ames  Cheever  to  Sarah 
Choate,  of  Ipswich  —  the  daughter  of  "Gov."  Thomas  Choate, 
of  Hog  (now  Choate)  Island  —  these  two  prominent  pioneer 
families  of  Essex  County  were  allied.  Their  descendants  have 
filled  important  positions  in  the  world,  as  have  those  of  the  Rev. 
Thomas  Cheever  and  others  of  the  schoolmaster's  children,  as 
seen  in  records  given  by  John  T.  Hassam,  of  Boston,  Deloraine 
P.  Corey,  of  Maiden,  Elisha  D.  Eldridge,  of  Boston,  Dr.  David 
B.  Cheever,  of  Boston,  Mr.  Ezekiel  Cheever  Whitman  (who 
changed  his  name  to  Ezekiel  Cheever),  and  others  who  might  be 
mentioned.  Nor  should  we  forget  descendants  of  Susanna  Rus- 
sell, the  daughter  who  ministered  to  the  venerable  master  in  his 
last  days. 

VI. 

Hn  Bssai?  on  tbe  /IDemor^  of  m^  IDenerablc 
ObaBtcx,  leseftiel  Cbccper 

BY   COTTON    MATHER 

Augusta  ;perstringere  Carmine  Laudes. 

^uas  nulla  Eloquij  vis  Celebrare  gueat. 
You  that  are  men  &  thoughts  of  manhood  know, 
Be  Just  now  to  the  Man  that  made  you  so. 
Martyr'dhy  Scholars  the  stabb'd  Cassian  dies, 
And  falls  to  cursed  Lads  a  Sacrifice. 
Not  so  my  Cheever  ;  Not  by  Scholars  slain, 
But  Prais'd  and  Lov'd,  and  wish'd  to  Life  again. 
A  mighty  Tribe  of  Well-instructed  Youth 
Tell  what  they  owe  to  him,  and  Tell  the  Truth. 
All  the  Bight  parts  of  Speech  he  taught  to  them 
They  now  Employ  to  Trumpet  his  Esteem, 
They  fill  Fames  Trumpet,  and  they  spread  a  Fame 
To  last  till  the  Last  Trumpet  drown  the  same. 


EppenMx  79 


Magtster  pleased  them  well,  because  'twas  he  ; 
They  saw  that  Bonus  did  with  it  agree. 
While  they  said  Amo,  they  the  Hint  improve 
Him  for  to  make  the  Object  of  their  Love. 
No  Concord  so  Inviolate  they  knew 
As  to  pay  Honours  to  their  Master  due. 
With  Interjections  they  break  off  at  last, 
But,  Ah,  is  all  they  use,  Wo,  and  Alas  ! 
We  Learnt  Prosodia,  but  with  that  Design 
Our  Master's  Name  should  in  our  Verses  shine. 
Our  Weeping  Ovid  hut  instructed  us 
To  write  upon  his  Death,  De  Tristibus. 
Tully  we  read,  but  still  with  this  Intent, 
That  in  his  praise  we  might  be  Eloquent, 
Our  Stately  Virgil  made  us  but  Contrive 
As  our  Anckises  to  keep  him  Alive. 
When  Phcenix,  to  Achilles  was  assign'd 
A  Master,  then  we  thought  not  Homer  blind  : 
A  Phoenix,  which  Oh  1  might  his  Ashes  shew ! 
So  rare  a  Thing  we  thought  our  master  too. 
And  if  we  made  a  Theme,  'twas  with  Regret 
We  might  not  on  his  Worth  show  all  our  Wit. 

Go  on,  ye  Grateful  Scholars  to  proclame 

To  late  Posterity  your  Master's  Name. 
Let  it  as  many  Languages  declare 
As  on  L,oretto-Ta.h\e  do  appear. 

Too  much  to  be  by  any  one   exprest : 

/'//  tell  my  share,  and  jom  shall  tell  the  rest. 

Ink  is  too  vile  a  Liquor ;  Liquid  Gold 

Should  fill  the  Pen,  by  which  such  things  are  told. 

The  Book  should  Amyanthus-PnT^er  be 

All  writ  with  Gold,  from  all  corruption  free. 

A  Learned  Master  of  the  Languages 

Which  to  Rich  Stores  of  Learning  are  the  Keyes  ; 


8o  HppenMx 


He  taught  us  first  Good  Sense  to  understand 

And  put  the  Golden  Keys  into  our  hand. 

We  but  for  him  had  been  for  Learning  Dumb, 

And  had  a  sort  of  Turkish  Mutes  become. 

Were  Grammar  quite  Extinct,  yet  at  his  Brain 

The  Candle  might  have  well  been  lit  again. 

If  Rhet'rick  had  been  stript  of  all  her  Pride 

She  from  his  Wardrobe  might  have  been  supply'd. 

Do  but  Name  Cheever,  and  the  Echo  straight 

Upon  that  name,  Good  Latin,  will  Repeat. 

A  Christian  Terence,  master  of  the  File 

That  arms  the  Curious  to  Reform  their  Style. 

Now  Rome  and  Athens  from  their  Ashes  rise  ; 

See  their  Platonick  Tear  with  vast  surprize  : 

And  in  our  School  a.  Miracle  is  wrought ; 

For  the  Dead  Languages  to  Life  are  brought. 

His  Work  he  Lov'd  :  Oh  !  had  we  done  the  same  I 

Our  Play-dayes  still  to  him  ungrateful  came. 

And  yet  so  well  our  Work  adjusted  Lay, 

We  came  to  Work,  as  if  we  came  to  Play. 

Our  Lads  had  been,  but  for  his  wondrous  Cares, 

Boyes  of  my  I^ady  Mores  unquiet  Pray'rs. 

Sure  were  it  not  for  such  informing  Schools, 

Our  La f  ran  too  would  soon  be  fill'd  with  Owles. 

'Tis  Corlefs  pains,  and  Cheever's  we  must  own, 

That  thou,  Ne-w  England,  art  not  Scythia  grown. 

The  Isles  of  Silly  had  o'er-run  this  Day 

The  Continent  of  our  America. 

Grammar  he  taught,  which  'twas  his  work  to  do ; 

But  he  would  Hagar  have  her  place  to  know. 

The  Bible  is  the  sacred  Grammar,  where 
The  Rules  of  speaking  -well,  contained  are. 
He  taught  us  Lilly,  and  he  Gospel  taught ; 
And  us  poor  Children  to  our  Saviour  brought. 
Master  of  Sentences,  he  gave  us  more 


HppenMx 


Than  we  in  our  Sententiae  had  before. 

We  Learn't  Good  Things  in  Tullies  Offices  ; 

But  we  from  him  Learn't  Better  things  than  these. 

With  Cato's  he  to  us  the  Higher  gave. 

Lessons  of  Jesus,  that  our  Souls  do  save. 

We  Constru'd  Ovid's  Metamorphosis, 

But  on  ourselves  charg'd,  not  a  change  to  miss. 

Young  Austin  wept,  when  he  saw  Dido  dead, 

Tho'  not  a  Tear  for  a  Lost  Soul  he  had  ; 

Our  Master  would  not  let  us  be  so  vain, 

But  us  from  Virgil  did  to  David  train, 

Textors  Epistles  would  not  Cloathe  our  Souls  ; 

Pauls  too  we  heard  ;  we  ivent  to  School  at  Pauls. 

Syrs,  Do  you  not  Remember  well  the  Times, 

When  us  he  warn'd  against  our  Youthful  Crimes  ; 

What  Honey  dropt  from  our  old  Nestors  mouth 

When  with  his  counsels  he  Reform'd  our  Youth  ; 

How  much  he  did  to  make  us  Wise  and  Good ; 

And  with  what  Prayers,  his  work  he  did  conclude. 

Concern'd  that  when  from  him  we  Learning  had. 

It  might  not  Armed  Wickedness  be  made  ! 

The  Sun  shall  first  the  Zodiac  forsake. 

And  Stones  unto  the  Stars  their  Flight  shall  make  ; 

First  shall  the  Summer  bring  large  drifts  of  Snoiv, 

And  beauteous  Cherries  in  December  grow ; 

Ere  of  those  Charges  we  Forgetful  are 

Which  we,  O  man  of  God,  from  thee  did  hear. 

Such  Tutors  to  the  Little  Ones  would  be. 
Such  that  in  Flesh  we  should  their  Angels  see ; 
Ezekiel  should  not  be  the  Name  of  such; 
We'd  Agathangelus  not  think  too  much. 

Who  Serv'd  the  School,  the  Church  did  not  forget ; 
But  Thought,  and  Pray'd,  and  often  wept  for  it. 


82  BppenMx 


Mighty  in  Prayer:  How  did  he  wield  thee,  Pray'r! 

Thou  Reverst  Thunder :  Christ's-Sides-piercing  spear? 

Soaring  we  saw  the  Bird  of  Paradise: 

So  Wing'd  by  Thee,  for  Flights  beyond  the  Skies. 

How  oft  we  saw  him  tread  the  Milky  Way, 

Which  to  the  Glorious  Throne  of  Mercy  lay ! 

Come  from  the  Mount,  he  shone  with  ancient  Grace, 

Awful  the  Splendor  of  his  Aged  Face. 

CloatKd'\n  the  Good  Old  Way,  his  Garb  did  wage 

A  War  with  the  Vain  Fashions  of  the  Age, 

Fearful  of  nothing  more  than  hateful  Sin  ; 

'Twas  that  from  which  he  laboured  all  to  win, 

Zealous;  And  in  Truths  Cause  ne'r  known  to  trim  ; 

No  Neuter  Gender  there  allow'd  by  him. 

Stars  but  a  Thousand  did  the  Ancients  know ; 

On  later  Globes  they  Nineteen  hundred  grow  ; 

Now  such  a  Cheever  added  to  the  Sphere 

Makes  an  Addition  to  the  Lustre  there. 

Meantime  America  a  Wonder  saw  ; 

A  Youth  in  Age,  forbid  by  Nature's  Law. 

You  that  in  t'other  Hemisphere  do  dwell. 
Do  of  Old  Age  your  dismal  Stories  tell. 
You  tell  of  Snowy  Heads  and  Rheumy  Eyes 
And  things  that  make  a  man  himself  despise, 
You  say  a.  frozen  Liquor  chills  the  Veins, 
And  scarce  the  Shadow  of  a  man  remains, 
Winter  of  Life,  that  Sapless  Age  you  call, 
And  of  all  Maladies  the  Hospital  ; 
The  Second  Nonage  of  the  Soul ;  the  Brain 
Cover'd  with  Cloud  ;  the  Body  all  in  pain. 
To  weak  Old  Age,  you  say,  there  must  belong, 
Trembling  Palsey  both  of  Limb  and  Tongue  ; 
Dayes  all  Decrepit ;  and  a  Bending  Back, 
Propt  by  a  Staff,  in  Hands  that  ever  shake. 


HppenMi  83 


Nay,  Syrs,  our  Cheever  shall  confute  you  all. 

On  whom  there  did  none  of  these  Mischef s  fall, 

He  Liv^d  and  to  vast  Age  no  Illness  knew ; 

Till  Times  Scythe  waiting  for  him  Rusty  grew. 

He  Liv'd  and  Wrought ;  his  Labours  were  immense ; 

But  ne'er  Declined  to  Praeter  perfect  Tense. 

A  Blooming  Touth  in  him  at  Ninety-Four 

We  saw ;  But  Oh  !  when  such  a  sight  before  ! 

At  Wondrous  Age  he  did  his  Touth  resume, 

As  when  the  Eagle  mews  his  Aged  plume. 

With  Faculties  of  Reason  still  so  bright, 

And  at  Good  Services  so  Exquisite  ; 

Sure  our  sound  Chiliast,  we  wondering  thought, 

To  the  First  Resurrection  is  not  brought ! 

No,  He  for  That  was  waiting  at  the  Gate, 

In  the  Pure  Things  that  fit  a  Candidate. 

He  in  Good  Actions  did  his  Life  Employ, 

And  to  make  others  Good,  he  made  his  Joy, 

Thus  well-appris'd  now  of  the  L,ife  to  Come, 

To  Live  here  was  to  him  a  Martyrdom, 

Our  brave  Macrobius  Long'd  to  see  the  Day 

Which  others  dread,  of  being  Call'd  away. 

So,  Ripe  with  Age,  he  does  invite  the  Hook, 

Which  watchful  does  for  its  large  Harvest  look  ; 

Death  gently  cut  the  Stalk,  and  kindly  laid 

Him,  where  our  God  His  Granary  has  made. 

Who  at  New-Haven  first  began  to  Teach, 
Dying  Unshipwreck' d,  does  White-Haven  reach. 
At  that  Fair-Haven  they  all  Storms  forget ; 
He  there  his  Davenport  with  Love  does  meet. 
The  Luminous  Robe,  the  Loss  whereof  with  Shame 
Our  Parents  wept,  when  Naked  they  became  ; 
Those  Lovely  Spirits  wear  it,  and  therein 
Serve  God  with  Priestly  Glory,  free  from  Sin. 

But  in  his  Paradisian  Rest  above 

To  Us  does  the  Blest  Shade  retain  his  Love. 


84  appenMx 


With  Rip' tied  Thoughts  Above  concern 'd  for  Us, 
We  can't  but  hear  him  dart  his  Wishes,  thus. 
'  Tutors,  Be  Strict ;  But  jet  be  Gentle  too, 
'  Don't  by  fierce  Cruelties  fair  Hopes  undo, 

*  Dream  not,  that  they  who  are  to  Learning  slow, 

*  Will  mend  by  Arguments  in  Ferio, 

'  Who  keeps  the  Golden  Fleece,  Oh,  let  him  not 

'  A  Dragon  be,  tho'  he  Three  Tongues  have  got. 

'  Why  can  you  not  to  Learning  find  the  way, 

'  But  thro'  the  Province  of  Severia.-' 

'  'Twas  Moderatus,  who  taught  Origen  ; 

'  A  Touth  which  prov'd  one  of  the  Best  of  men. 

*  The  Lads  with  Honour  first  and  Reason  Rule; 
'  Blovjes  are  but  for  the  Refractory  Fool. 

*  But,  Oh  !  First  Teach  them  their  Great  God  to  fear  j 
'  That  you  like  me,  with  joy  may  meet  them  here.' 

H'  has  said! — 
Adieu  a  little  while,  Dear  Saint,  Adieu  ; 
Your  Scholar  won't  be  long.  Sir,  after  you. 
In  the  mean  time,  with  Gratitude  I  must 
Engrave  an  Epitaph  upon  your  Dust. 
'Tis  true.  Excessive  Merits  rarely  safe  ; 
Such  an  Excess  forfeits  an  Epitaph  ; 
But  if  Base  men  the  Rules  of  Justice  break, 
The  Stories  (at  least  upon  the  Tombs)  will  speak. 

Et  Tumulum  facite,  et  Tumulo  superaddite  carmen. 
(Virg.  in  Daphn.). 

EPITAPHIUM 

EzEKiEL  Cheeverus  ; 

Ludi-magister ; 
Primo  Neo-portensis ; 

Dinde,  Ipsuicensis 

Postea,  Carolotenensis 

Postremo,  Bostonensis : 

cujus 


appenMx  85 


Doctrinam  ac  Virtutem 

N6sti  si  Sis  Nov-Anglus, 

Colis,  si  non  Barbarus  ; 

Grammaticus, 

a  Quo,  non  pure  tantum,  sed  et  pie, 

Loqui 

Rhetoricus 

a  Quo  non  tantum,  Ornate  dicere 

coram  Hominibus, 

Sed  et  Orationes  coram  Deo  fundere 

Efficacissimas ; 

Poeta, 

a  Quo  non  tantum  Carmina  pangere, 

Sed  et 

Caelestes  Hymnos,  Odasq :  Angelicas, 

canere, 

Didicerunt, 

Qui  discere  voluerunt : 

Lucerna, 

ad  Quam  accensa  sunt, 

Quis  queat  numerare, 

Quot  Ecclesiarum  Lumina? 

Et 

Qui  secum  Corpus  Theologiae  abstulit, 

Peritissimus  Theologus, 

Corpus  hie  suum  sibi  minus  Charum 

deposuit. 

Vixit  Annos,  XCIV. 

Docuit,  Annos  LXX. 

Obiit,  A.  D.  M.  DCC.VIII; 

Et  quod  Mori  potuit, 

Heic 

Expectat  Exoptatq : 

Primam  Sanctorum  Resurrectionem 

ad  Immortalitem. 

Exuvijs  debetur  Honos. 


Inbex  87 


A. 

Accidence,  Cheever's    .         .         .         .12,  14,  15,  16,  26,  37,  67 
Adams,  John         .........        4^2 

Adams,  Samuel 64,  71 

Agassiz         ..........  9 

Agawam .17 

Ames,  Almanack  .        .        .         .        .        .        .        .        21 

Ames,  Dr.  William I9»  59 

Andover 18,  20 

Andros,  Sir  Edmund    .......  28,  42 

Angier,  Edmund 19 

Angier,  Ruth .         .         19 

Anne,  Queen 42 

Appleton,  Samuel .         17 

Artillery  Election  Sermon  .......         25 

Ascham 18 

Athenaeum,  Boston      . 16 

Autograph,  Cheever 16 

B. 

Bacon,  Leonard  Woolsej 11 

Baldwin,  Ernest  H 14 

Barnard,   Rev.  John 36,  72,  77 

Barnett,  John 29 

Bay  Psalm  Book  .         .         .        .        .        .        .        .        21 

Bellingham,  Richard 24,  42 

Bentley,  Wm,,  D.D 18 

Biglow,  William 64 

Blue  Coat  Boys 27 

Boston 14,  19,  24,  42,  49 

Boston  Latin  School    ...         24,  26,  38,  45,  46,  48,  51,  61 
Boston  Latin  School  Association        .        .        .        .25,  53,  61 

Bradford,  William 20 

Bradstreet,  Anne .20 

Bradstreet,  Simon i7i  18,  26,  42 


88  llnbei 

Brooks,  Phillips 36,  45,  52 

"Burial  Hill,"  Char lestown 22,49 

C. 

Cambridge,  Mass 19,  27,  60 

Cambridge  University,  England  ....  10,  62 

Channing,  W.  E. 71 

Charlestown,  Mass.     ...        20,  22,  23,  24,  25,  38,  49,  58 

Charles  II 10,  24 

Chauncy,  Charles .         18 

Chebacco 23 

Cheever,  Abigail  ........        22 

Cheever,  Ames     . 39i  78 

Cheever,  Dr.  David  B 78 

Cheever,  Elizabeth       .......  I3>  50 

Cheever,  Ezekiel,  of  Salem 22 

Cheever,  Ezekiel,  Schoolmaster, 

9,  10,  n,  19,  23,  25,  35,  38,  46,  53,  54 

Cheever,  Ezekiel,  of  Charlestown 22 

Cheever,  Hannah         ........         13 

Cheever,  Mary     .........         13 

Cheever,  Nathaniel      ........         22 

Cheever,  Samuel  -        .  13,  18,  19,  20,  25,  36,  50,  57,  72 

Cheever,  Sarah     .........         13 

Cheever,  Susannah 38,  49,  50 

Cheever,  Thomas 22,  49,  50,  78 

Choate  Island 78 

Choate,  Sarah 78 

Choate,  Thomas 78 

Christ's  Hospital,  London 27,  62 

Church  Street,  New  Haven lO 

Clarke,  James  Freeman 68 

Corey,  Deloraine  P 78 

Corlet,  Elijah 27 

Cotton,  Rev.  John 62 

Cromwell,  Oliver         ........        20 


89 


ln^er 


D. 

"  Day  of  Doom  " ii,  21 

Davenport,  John 9i  10 

Deer  Island 52|  62 

Diary,  Sewall's 25,  38,  39 


64,  69 

37 

64,  69 

62 

H 
42 
20 
13 


17. 


Dillaway,  Charles  Knapp 

Diary,  Stiles' 

Dixwell,  Epes  Sargent 

Dorchester,  Mass 

Dryden  .         

Dudley,  Joseph 

Dudley,  Thomas 

Dunster,  President  of  Harvard  College 

E. 

Eaton,  Theophilus 9,  10 

Eldridge,  Elisha  D 78 

Election  Sermon  in  Old  South  Church       ....        77 

Eliot,  John 20,  38,  58 

II 

71 
10 
20 

18 

78 
49 


Elm  Street,  New  Haren 

Emerson,  Ralph  Waldo 

Emmanuel  College 

Endicott,  John 

Erasmus       .......... 

"Essay  in  Rhyme" 43,44,49 

Eustis  Street  Burying  Ground,  Roxbury    ...  45 


17. 


Feoffers 

Fox,  George 

Fiske,  Arthur  I.  . 

Fisk,  Rev.  John   . 

Franeker  University 

Franklin,  Benjamin 

Free  School 

Funeral  Sermon  of  Rev.  John  Barnard 


42,  63,  64 
17.  18,  43 


22 

42 

64 

17 

59 

66,  71 

62,65 

36,  72 


9°  1^n^eI 

6. 

Gardner  Francis 64,  69,  70 

Gay,  A.  M. 64,  70 

General  Court 12,  13,  39,  60,  64,  65 

Gould,  Benjamin  Apthorp  ....       64,  68,  70,  71 

Gould,  Zaccheus 17 

"  Grammarian's  Funeral  " — Tompson        .        .        .46,  47,  48 

Granary  Burying  Ground 49 

"  Grandfather's  Chair " 31 

Grant,  Robert 52 

Greek  .        .         . 16,  26,  35 

Green,  Dr.  Samuel  A. 46 

Green  and  Russell,  Printers 16 

Grove  Street,  New  Haven 10 

n. 

Hale,  Edward  Everett 24,  25,  51,  61 

Hall  of  Fame,  New  York 71 

Hancock,  John 42,64,66,71 

Harris,  T.  M 15 

Harvard,  John .  22,53 

Harvard  University      .         .  13,  14,  18,  24,  26,  28,  39,  45,  69 

Hassam,  John  T. 16,  18,52,78 

Haynes,  Henry  W 52 

Hawthorne,  Nathaniel 31 

Holland  University 19 

Hooker,  Thomas 59i  60 

Hooper,  William 64 

Hull,  John 70 

Hunt,  Samuel 64 

Hutchinson,  Anne 12,  61 

Hutchinson,  Governor 42 

I. 

Ipswich,  Mass 17,  18,  20,  21,  22,  23,  38,  78 

Ipswich  Historical  Society 22,  23 


llnt)cx 


91 


J. 


Jefferson,  Thomas 
Jenks,  Rev.  Henry  F. 


4* 
34 


King's  Chapel 25 

King  Philip's  War 42 


Lathrop,  Ellen 

Lathrop,  Thomas 

Latin  Epistles 

Latin  Epitaph 

Latin  Letters 

Leffingwell,  E.  H. 

Leverett,  F.  P.     . 

Leverett,  Governor 

Leverett,  John 

Lewis,  Ezekiel 

Lombard  Street,  New  Haven 

Lovell,  John 


57 


63 


22,50 
22 
18 
85 

58.59 
19 

64,  69 
42 

26,  42 

37.40 
54 

67,71 


M. 


Jl/a^«a/»a,  Cotton  Mather 9,17,21,59,60 

Manchester,  Mass 17.  39 

Mansfield,  Isaac,  Rev. 58 

Marblehead 20,  36 

Massachusetts  Colony 12,  20 

Massachusetts  Historical  Society        .         .    16,  18,  36,  39,  46,  58 

Massasoit 12 

Mather,  Cotton    ....        26,  35,  42,  48,  51,  53,  59,  78 

Mather,  Increase 26,  41 

Mather,  Samuel 35 

Maude,  Daniel 62 

Maxwell,  Samuel 37 

Memorial  Hall,  Cambridge 19 


92  1rn^er 

Merrill,  Moses 64,  70 

Milton,  John 11,24,63 

Monument  in  Ipswich  .        .        .        .        .        .  23 

N. 

New  Haven  .         .        .        .  9,  10,  11,  13,  14,  17,  18,  54 

* '  New  Meadows  " 17 

Newman's  Barn    .........  9 

Norcross,  Grenville  H 52»  53 

Norton,  Pastor 21 

o. 

Oakes,  Edward     .........        41 

Old  South  Meeting-house  .        .        .        .       37,  39,  40, 42 

Otis,  Harrison  Gray    ........        64 

Oxford  University lo,  62 

P. 

"Paterna" 35 

Paradise  Lost,  Milton          .......  24 

Paine,  Robert  Treat 64 

Payne,  Robert 18 

Pemberton  (Rev.) 40 

Phillips  Academy 15 

Phillips,  Wendell 68 

Philips,  Mary 50 

Plymouth  Colony .  20,  24 

Pope,  Alexander 24 

Pormort,  Philemon 61,62 

Prince,  Thomas 37 

Q. 

Queen  Street,  Boston 14 

Quincy,  Edmund 15 

Quincy,  Josiah I4i  ^5 

Quinnipiack 9 


•(in^ex  93 

B. 

Register,  Historical  and  Genealogical         .        .         .         .  i6 

Revere,  Paul 42 

Rogers,  Nathaniel 3i 

Rumney  Marsh    ........  22 

Russell,  Ezekiel 50 

Russell,  Joseph 38 

Russell,  Susannah 38,  40,  49,  50,  78 

s. 

Salem,  Mass 17,  18,  22,  42 

Saltonstall,  Nathaniel 18 

Saltonstall,  Richard 17 

School,  South  Latin  Grammar 25 

School  Street,  Boston 25,  64 

School-house,  Ezekiel  Cheever 54 

School-House  Lane 25 

"  Scripture  Prophecies  Explained  " 15 

Sewall,  Judge 25,  38,  41 

Smybert 39 

Stiles,  Ezra,  President  Yale  College 37 

St.  Paul's  School,  London 63 

Sumner,  Charles 68,  7 1 

T. 

Tablet  of  Ezekiel  Cheever 53 

Temple  Street       .........         11 

"  The  Simple  Cobbler  of  Agawam  " 20 

Thursday  Lecture 25,  34 

Tomb  of  Ezekiel  Cheever,  Esq.,  on  Burial  Hill,  Charles- 
town       22,  49 

Tompson,  Benjamin 45,  49,  62 

Topsfield 17 

W. 

Wadsworth,  Mr.  .........        38 

Walker,  Samuel 15 


94  Inbex 

Walter,  Nehemiah 26 

Ward,  Nathaniel 20 

Warren  Avenue,  Boston       .......         53 

Washington,  George   ....  ...        42 

Waters,  Rev.  T.  Frank 23 

Wenham,  Mass 17 

Whitman,  Ezekiel  Cheever 78 

Wigglesworth,  Michael 10 

Will,  Ezekiel  Cheever's 49 

Williams,  Nathaniel 39,  40,  41,  52,  63 

Williams,  Roger  .........         12 

Winthrop,  John 17.  24 

Winthrop,  John,  Jr .18 

Winthrop,  Robert  C 68 

Win  slow,  Edward 20 

Witchcraft,  Salem .        42 

Woodbridge,  John 62 

Woodmancy,  John        ........         46 

Woodman sey,  Robert 46,  62 

Z. 
Zealand        . ax 


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